Penang’s street art renaissance started with one man: Ernest Zacharevic. In 2012, the city council commissioned the then-26-year-old Lithuanian artist to create six murals for the George Town Arts & Culture Festival. The city centre had been named a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2009, but instead of freezing the area in time, Penang decided to bring life to the very bricks and plaster that hold the city together.

Zacharevic’s pieces celebrated the island. He depicted the people of Penang living their lives, incorporating everything from its architecture to its transport to the bicycles that rested against its sun-bleached walls. He painted rickshaw drivers waiting for fares; girls looking wistfully out to sea; children riding gleefully on bicycles. He captured the playfulness and joy of Penang.

Zacharevic has become Penang’s Banksy, his art putting the island on the map in an all new way. Since then some of the biggest names in street art have brought their work to Penang alongside the city’s home-grown talent. Zacharevic, who is still based in George Town, has managed to change the way the world sees this little ex-colony. These days tourists visit for the food, the culture and the walls. Zacharevic’s signature piece, Little Children on Bicycle, is so popular that you’ll find it emblazoned on T-shirts sold in night markets. It’s as iconic as Penang’s hawker centres.