Penang Heritage Walk Blog

George Town’s street murals are now among the most photographed artworks in Southeast Asia, but behind each image is a story that most visitors walking past with a selfie stick never hear. Here are the five stories you should know before you go.

1. How It All Started — The 2012 Georgetown Festival Commission

The street art programme that transformed George Town’s walls began in mid-2012 when the George Town Festival — an annual arts event launched to celebrate the city’s UNESCO inscription — commissioned a young Lithuanian artist named Ernest Zacharevic to create a series of interactive murals in the heritage zone. Zacharevic, then 26, had studied fine arts in Nottingham and was already known in London for his pop-surrealist canvases. What made his George Town works immediately distinctive was the decision to incorporate real objects into the paintings: actual bicycles, swings, and chairs bolted to the wall became props within the painted scenes, blurring the line between artwork and street furniture. Within weeks of the murals’ completion, tourists were lining up in the heat to take photographs, and George Town’s entire narrative as a tourist destination shifted overnight.

2. “Boy on Bike” — The Mural That Started a Phenomenon

Located at the junction of Armenian Street and Lebuh Cannon, “Boy on Bike” (officially titled Boy on a Motorcycle) shows a young Malay boy sitting astride a real Honda Cub motorcycle bolted to the wall. The child in the painting is local — Zacharevic spent time photographing and sketching ordinary George Town residents to ensure his subjects reflected the genuine community rather than a generic “Asian street scene.” The motorcycle was an old bike found in the neighbourhood and painted into the composition so that the boundary between painted image and physical object is deliberately ambiguous. The mural was damaged twice by vehicles and has been restored; look closely and you can see slight variations in the repainted sections.

3. “Sisters on Bicycle” — The Most Copied Image in Malaysia

On Lebuh Armenian, “Little Children on a Bicycle” (commonly called “Sisters on Bicycle”) depicts two Chinese children — an older girl pedalling a vintage bicycle with a younger girl seated on the handlebars — both grinning at the viewer. The bicycle is real, welded to a bracket in the wall. The image became the defining photograph of a Penang trip within months of its completion and spawned hundreds of imitations and merchandise lines across Malaysia. Zacharevic has spoken in interviews about his ambivalence at the commercialisation of a work that was intended as a gift to the neighbourhood, not a tourism product; the family that lived in the shophouse behind it reportedly dealt with constant crowds at all hours for years.

4. The Indian Muslim Man — A Portrait of a Community That Is Disappearing

On Lebuh Chulia, Zacharevic painted “Indian Muslim Man Reading Quran” — a solitary elderly man seated in a traditional doorway, engrossed in a book. Unlike the playful bicycle murals, this painting carries an elegiac quality. The Indian Muslim community (known locally as Jawi Peranakan) — descendants of South Indian traders who married locally — was once the merchant backbone of Lebuh Chulia and Lebuh Pasar, but by 2012 very few of the original families remained. The mural was Zacharevic’s quiet acknowledgment of a culture that UNESCO inscription and tourism had paradoxically both celebrated and displaced.

5. The Steel Rod & Wire Caricature Series — The Works Most Visitors Miss

Alongside the painted murals, George Town hosts a parallel series of steel rod and wire caricature sculptures mounted on shophouse walls. These were created by a separate team working under the same 2012 festival brief and illustrate scenes from local daily life and Penang folklore: a man selling cendol from a cart, children playing five-stones, a woman hanging laundry. They are deliberately rough-sketched in style — the artists described them as “a drawing made from wire” — and many visitors walk past without noticing them, eyes drawn to the more dramatic painted murals nearby. A full steel rod trail map is available from the GTWHI visitor centre and is worth picking up separately from the main heritage trail map.

Best Walking Route for the Art Trail

Start at the junction of Armenian Street and Lebuh Cannon (“Boy on Bike”). Walk west along Armenian Street past the Blue Mansion to “Sisters on Bicycle.” Turn south onto Lebuh Pantai and then east along Lebuh Chulia for the “Indian Muslim Man” and several wire caricatures. The full art trail covers approximately 2.5 km and takes 1.5–2 hours at a relaxed pace. Early morning (before 09:00) is strongly recommended — the bicycle murals attract queues from 10:00 onward, particularly on weekends.