It’s Saturday night at Narrow Marrow, a hipster cafe in George Town, the capital of Penang island in Malaysia. Among the patrons are Malaysian mural artists Bibichun and Kang Bla Bla, as well as a number of other local creatives. They sit on low chairs while indie and electronic music blares from speakers overhead, rolling cigarettes and sipping coffees and coconut toddy mojitos until the wee hours. The cafe, tucked at the end of Carnarvon Road, the main thoroughfare leading into George Town , is run by Alvin Neoh and Jaime Oon, two young designers turned artsy cafe operators. It attracts a regular crowd of Penang’s young creatives, who enjoy popping in after working hours. That same crowd is likely to be spotted on Sunday afternoons selling their wares not far away at the Hin Bus Pop Up Sunday Market, located just behind Penang’s highest building, the Komtar Tower. The market, on the site of a former bus car park, attracts hipster tourists from all over, hoping to bring home some locally made art. Looking at this commercial den, it is hard to believe that this was where Penang’s groundbreaking street art revolution broke out of the woodwork. Between 2014 and 2016, local and international artists found a spotlight here and transformed this once sleepy island into one of Southeast Asia’s most celebrated artistic hubs. Today, however, things are different. A profusion of industrial chic outlets peddling overpriced espressos and yoga classes has transformed the soul of the town. While there is still a hint of that primeval spark at Hin Bus, the artists look tired and jaded. Hin Bus’ walls still feature some of Penang’s early murals, including pieces by Lithuanian artist Ernest Zacharevic . Some hail Zacharevic as the “Malaysian Banksy ”; to others, however, he’s the “foreign devil” who sparked George Town’s hipster commercialisation. Zacharevic’s most famous Penang piece is Little Children on a Bicycle , which has graced the eastern end of Armenian Street since 2012. Voted by British newspaper The Guardian as one of the world’s best pieces of street art, it attracts thousands of selfie-hungry tourists every month. Every day, they stand in line waiting for their chance to get a picture with the piece. The queues often block traffic, creating chaos and angering drivers. Even Zacharevic – whose career exploded in Penang after his participation in the 2012 George Town Festival – is not pleased with the way his work has transformed Armenian Street and, as a consequence, George Town as a whole. In an Instagram post in July, Zacharevic wrote that “myself and many others blame my work for Armenian Street being a [central tourist route] in Penang and honestly I’ve been contemplating simply painting over it in hopes to put an end to that circus”. He also claimed that the heritage area has lost its spirit, filled by “all kinds of Insta-friendly quickly consumable concept stores”. But when contacted by the South China Morning Post and asked to elaborate on his thoughts about Penang’s arts scene, he didn’t reply. “His post just shows how the idea of a mural has been completely blown out of proportion by Penang State, Penang’s population and the tourists who flock to Insta-see it,” says Briton James Springer, a former resident of the island and author of Malaysia’s Canvas , a book about Penang’s contemporary art scene. “Armenian Street, where I used to live when first arriving in Penang, is a circus now,” Springer adds. “But let’s not forget that, beyond the mural, a lot of its tacky commodification is due to older, poorer, largely unemployed tenants jumping on the tourist-tat bandwagon wanting to make a quick buck.” As a result, international tourists today visit an increasingly snobbish and hipster George Town – a surreal place filled with uninspiring 3D art and food museums, set next to cookie-cutter coffee shops. It isn’t the Unesco status won by Penang in 2007 on the grounds of its multi-ethnic social landscape and century-old traditions that they come for. They come because of the street art. Overpriced Western comfort foods, tacky souvenirs and historical lanes where beg-packers and jugglers have started setting up shop complete George Town’s current sorry landscape. It’s a very different setting from the decadent and yet beautiful small town that inspired the rise of Penang’s arts scene. At the government level, there is no vision for the Penang art scene. Resources are spent on ad hoc and one-off events to attract tourism with very little context of the layers of culture and history that Penang has Stephanie Kee, project executive, Penang Art District Many believe things started getting out of hand after the international media attention given to Zacharevic’s early murals inspired the local government to support platforms such as Urban Xchange, an international street art festival that brought artists from as far as Australia and New York. The annual festival was held between 2014 and 2016 and was organised by Khing Chuah (now manager of the Hin Bus Depot art space), Eeyan Chuah (also at Hin Bus Depot) and Lithuanian writer Gabija Grusaite. They collectively spruced up Nagore Square and other up-and-coming George Town neighbourhoods with brand new street art pieces. “But they were repeatedly challenged, constrained and victimised by traditionalists who didn’t even realise their ability to positively interact with the modern world,” Springer says. These were also the years when the chief minister of Penang was Lim Guan Eng – now Malaysia’s minister of finance – who, despite “being a politician through and through”, as Springer puts it, “had much to gain politically by actively going against the federal government’s policy of censorship and repression by allowing, as much as possible, artistic freedom”. The situation for artists is quite different today. They must comply with heritage-oriented guidelines set out by bodies such as George Town World Heritage and the Penang Heritage Trust. This has discouraged some of the more original and innovative artists and curators. Kuala Lumpur-born Stephanie Kee moved to George Town to become the project executive of the Penang Art District – a creative hub planned for the coastal area of Macallum that has yet to open. She believes that “at the government level, there is no vision for the Penang art scene. Resources are spent on ad hoc and one-off events to attract tourism with very little context of the layers of culture and history that Penang has.” Thomas Powell, a British artist who started his career in Penang and runs a studio in gentrified Armenian Street, says that artists should maybe look further afield to exhibit their work. “George Town is a great place to work and create, but it might make more sense to exhibit elsewhere if possible … I pretty much built my whole career here in Penang and it is still heading in the right direction. I have faith that it can improve but some things need to change and new avenues need to be made available or worked on. “I do try and travel for projects, and would probably aim to sell higher-quality pieces outside Penang as there doesn’t really seem to be a local clientele to support the effort or ideas.” But as long as tourists keep coming and spending while enjoying their superficial experience of Penang island, there’s no easy solution to the city’s declining art scene. “There’s an illusion that artists in Penang are ‘lazy’,” Kee says. “I think the problem is more complex than that. How do we expect artists to thrive in an environment where they are not given the room and resources to experiment and grow?”