Penang artist turns everyday life into lasting memories

THERE'S something quietly comforting about the things we do every day.

The craftsman returning to his workbench, his hands familiar with a skill that may have travelled through generations. The worker finishing a long day and settling into the same hawker stall, ordering the meal he knows by heart. The shopkeeper opening up another morning on a street that has become part of the rhythm of his life.

And then there's a father, simply being there as his child grows.

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For Penang artist Lee Eng Beng, 59, these seemingly unremarkable moments are anything but.

They form the heart of HARI HARI — A Way of Life, his first solo exhibition at AweGallery, bringing together paintings inspired by the streets and everyday life of Penang, the people and traditional trades that give the island much of its cultural character, and a more intimate subject: his experience of fatherhood.

The title, HARI HARI, means "every day", an apt description of what Lee chooses to notice.

His Penang isn't necessarily the postcard version of the island. It's found in old shophouses, neighbourhood streets, back lanes, roadside stalls and familiar corners that people pass without much thought because they've always been there.

But perhaps that's precisely why they matter. Lee's paintings invite us to look again at places that have become so familiar that we've stopped really seeing them — and at the people whose daily routines quietly keep those places alive.

Among them are craftsmen practising traditional trades, often skills handed down through generations. Their work may not feel like an act of cultural preservation to them. It's simply what they do for a living and something they return to day after day.

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The same rhythm appears in Lee's paintings of workers and labourers. After work, they return to familiar hawker stalls, sit at familiar tables and have their usual meals. There's nothing particularly extraordinary about such a scene — and that's precisely its appeal.

Because a life is, after all, made up largely of such moments. The places we return to, the people we recognise, the meals we eat without having to think about what to order, the work we do with our hands… and the streets whose corners we know almost instinctively.

Seen through Lee's eyes, these become more than passing scenes. They become fragments of memory.

TO BELONG TO A PLACE

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There's warmth and nostalgia in his paintings, but also an awareness that Penang, like everywhere else, is changing. Streets evolve, buildings age, businesses disappear and traditional trades can become increasingly difficult to sustain.

What Lee captures, then, isn't simply how Penang looks, but something of how it feels to belong to a place. And perhaps this is what makes HARI HARI more than a collection of paintings about Penang. It's also about what we might lose without realising it.

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Culture doesn't live only in grand buildings, heritage sites or official celebrations. Sometimes it survives because somebody continues to sit at the same stall, open the same shop, practise the same craft or return to the same street — hari hari.

That idea of continuity extends into the most personal part of the exhibition: Lee's paintings about fatherhood. Here, the streets and buildings give way to the relationship between a father and his children, explored through companionship, responsibility, protection and affection.

RECORDING A RELATIONSHIP

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Again, Lee doesn't appear drawn to grand gestures. Instead, there's meaning in the quieter work of being a parent — spending time together, being present, watching a child grow and simply showing up.

It's an understanding of fatherhood that feels especially fitting alongside his paintings of everyday Penang. Because being a father, too, is built on repetition. You show up, you care, you watch, you protect, you spend time together. And then you do it again the next day… and the next.

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In these works, fatherhood isn't presented only through the traditional image of the father as provider or protector. There's also tenderness, emotional presence and vulnerability. It reveals another side of the artist — one that's perhaps less concerned with recording a place than with recording a relationship. Yet the two bodies of work are not as far apart as they might first appear.

One is about the place Lee calls home, while the other is about the people who make a home. Both are ultimately concerned with familiarity, continuity and belonging.

Says Lee: "I hope the audience will be able to find meaning in things that many of us may easily overlook. The Penang scenes are not simply paintings of streets and buildings. They hold memories, familiarity and a strong sense of place."

And it's seeing those works alongside his paintings about fatherhood that gives the exhibition a deeper personal meaning for him.

"There's a very different kind of strength and tenderness in the way I expressed the relationship between a father and his children," he confides, adding: "Together, they allow us to understand not only what I paint, but also what matters to me."

ORDINARY MOMENTS

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For a first solo exhibition, that makes HARI HARI feel less like a declaration and more like an introduction. Here is an artist looking back at the places, people, routines and relationships that have shaped him, and asking us, perhaps, to consider our own.

How often do we really look at the street we walk down every day? The old shop we've passed for years? Or the person who has been doing the same work for as long as we can remember? Perhaps the ordinary moments with our parents, children and loved ones that feel too familiar to be precious… until, one day, they become memories?

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Maybe that's the quiet beauty of HARI HARI. It reminds us that the things we repeat without thinking can become the things that define us. That a place is shaped not only by its landmarks, but by the people who inhabit it and the routines they keep. And that relationships, much like traditions, are sustained not necessarily by grand gestures but by the simple act of being there.

Hari Hari. Every day.

Until the everyday becomes the story of who we are.

intanm@nst.com.my

HARI HARI — A Way of Life

featuring Lee Eng Beng

WHEN: Until Oct 14

WHERE: AweGallery, 21, Jalan 20/13, Taman Paramount, Petaling Jaya.