When an artist from Singapore was invited to paint a mural on the walls of a residential building in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore, he couldn’t decline the offer. Yip Yew Chong, 55, flew to the city at the end of January 2024 and beautified a four-storey building in Ukkadam.
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The mural he painted measures 15m by 14m and is inspired by the daily life in the city. It features various activities, such as a man pouring tea, a woman making thosai, and a vendor selling pani puri. He also added a goat and a cat to the mural since residents kept asking him to paint their pets, reported The Straits Times.
Chong also shared updates on his Instagram handle about his 10-day visit to the city. He shared a few pictures on January 28 with the caption, “My Studio for the next ten days - a prelude to ‘I Paint my World’.” The pictures show him enjoying tea and food. Some even show the murals on the city buildings. A few photos show children playing and women filling pitchers with water from the community tank.
In another post, he shared an ‘Indian version of Chinatown tea-pouring mural’. He also shared pictures of the murals by his friends in the city.
{{/usCountry}}In another post, he shared an ‘Indian version of Chinatown tea-pouring mural’. He also shared pictures of the murals by his friends in the city.
{{/usCountry}}Chong, in a post on February 4, shared the progress of his mural in Ukkadam. Alongside, he wrote, “I’m happy to say I’m on track!” The pictures show him posing in different angles with his mural. While one of the pictures shows him ‘holding’ the glass of tea that he painted, another shows him ‘drinking’ tea that a man is pouring in the mural. The third shows the other part of the building with the incomplete artwork. The remaining pictures show him enjoying food, playing with the children and taking selfies with the locals.
On February 6, his last day of painting the mural, he shared the backstory of including a pani puri vendor in his artwork. “As the sun sets, the food stalls open. Right in front of the wall is a pani puri stall. It gave me the idea to add it on the wall as a life-size segment of the mural to give the giant mural a twist. Many people came by and gave us a ‘supera’ hand-signal (meaning ‘super’),” said Chong in his Instagram post.
He also added a Tamil phrase ‘வாங்க சாப்பிடலாம்’ to the mural. It translates to ‘Come, let’s eat’. He explained that he used this phrase to ‘mimic the many typographs found all over Coimbatore’s street walls’.
Chong also shared that he received help from passers-by while painting his mural. “There was this man who corrected the shape of the spatula used to make thosai in my mural. He took my brush and drew the correct shape on the ground,” Chong told The Straits Times.
During his stay in Coimbatore, Chong noticed some similarities between the Tamil culture of Singapore, Malaysia, and India. He told The Strait Times, “There are similarities with Singaporean and Malaysian Tamil culture such as Thaipusam, roti prata and teh tarik, but it’s quite amazing to see how culture has evolved among the diaspora.”