Street Art in Hatyai: A First Step

 I have been wanting to start documenting some of the street art, graffiti, and other forms of art on display in Hatyai. My interest in street art wasn't all that strong before leaving Canada. My hometown of Windsor had graffiti, murals on the walls, and art installations along the stretch of Riverside parks. However, I was never particularly interested in it. Perhaps it's another case of taking what we have for granted. It must have been Georgetown, Penang in Malaysia that changed my perception of street art.

Georgetown, Penang is famous for its street art. On my first visit there, I didn't know beforehand that it was abundant and rich in street art culture. I got there and found out. There was this pamphlet with a map of various well-known street artworks and I thought it would be a cool hour or two to follow that trail. I ended up spending my whole first day there walking around and taking photos of all the art on the walls. The following day, I spent some more time tracking down art in the city. And everytime I went to Penang after that, I was thrilled to see new art on the walls.

What ended up happening was that, a young filmmaker in Penang and I got in touch. And we started talking about making a dance activism video. On the following trip to Penang, we met up and started filming. I suggested we use the rich backdrop of street art as scenes to the short film we were creating. We shot hours of footage, a lot of which was in front of street art in the city. All my time spent tracking street art in Penang had beared its fruit. The resulting video was titled Expression: Dance Activism Documentary.

Back in Hatyai, I had never felt a great presence of street art. Of course, I would see the odd graffiti here and there. Sometimes I would see graffiti in greater clusters and still not make much of it. Hatyai and Penang cannot be compared when it comes to street art. Songkla town is another place where the street art stands out. Yala city is also another place in southern Thailand where street art stands out. However, there's still no fair comparison between any of these places in southern Thailand to Georgetown, Penang. Georgetown is the street art capital.

This is partially why I wanted to start documenting street art in Hatyai. Just like I took the art installations along Windsor's riverfront for granted, perhaps I've been taking the street art in Hatyai for granted as well. I would love to see that expand and grow here. Part of my intentions with documenting street art in Hatyai is to help it grow. Perhaps more artists would more readily demonstrate their abilities if they knew more people were showing interest. Art makes a city carry so much more dimension. Art inspires imagination, thus generating even more art. Let's see where this journey of documenting street art in Hatyai will take us on this blog.

This was a photo taken sometime last month. My intention was to capture the street art behind the men gathered round, not to disturb these guys. However, both results were achieved. This photo was first shown from the first blog post of 2021.

Yesterday we went into the city with some errands to run. Traffic looked blocked up on a main road. I saw construction vehicles so we took a spontaneous right turn. As we drove by, I saw this mural on the wall. And I gotta thank the artist who put this up because it made us stop to take photos.

And so the deliberate documentation of street art in Hatyai had begun with this piece.

Don't you love it when you make a spontaneous decision and the universe rewards you?

Our decision had a lot of momentum to it apparently because as we walked back to the car, we saw this little alley. It seemed like a hollowed out garage space and guess what? It had more street art! 

As much as I wanted to be present and take in the space first, I couldn't contain my excitement to document street art in Hatyai. We started taking photo after photo.

The little mouse in the corner coming out of the wall is also coming out of the Year of the Mouse.

I really liked seeing this wheelbarrow installation in the wall. Also, you can see more art in the walls of the restaurant inside the window.

 

Tuktuks are apparently an inspiration for local art. And it's not the first Tuktuk on this page. It reminds me of my own artistic experimentation with a Tuktuk. You can see that in this video posted three years ago.

 

The restaurant next to the alley with the street art might have been responsible for commissioning some of the art. The whole side opposite the wheelbarrow, Muslim lady, the mouse, and the dog peeing on the postal box, had this map of different attractions and restaurants in Hatyai.

Bearing The Banner of Art

Ying got to work immediately on this installation.

Here we plug in the Iaso Tea. For more information on that, check out the previous introductory post on that topic.

Later on we were blessed to drive by this installation as well.

We took another stop to document some art, having fun in the process.

It's hot in Hatyai but it's worth going under the sun to take some photos of art.

My New Whip Has No Wheels

This is only the first post with the street art. There will be more to come. If you know of street art in the city, feel free to share some cool locations in the city. Let's expand the awareness around art. If you're an artist and you want your art featured on the blog, please get in touch with me using the Contact Page. I am very eager to showcase local art on the blog.

Thank you for supporting the blog and local art in Hatyai. This is a collective journey. The artists paint, people take it in, inspiration is born, and the world around us expands. Peace.