His vibrant take on various peribahasa has earned him wide acclaim, but while these drawings will bring a smile to the face, they were inspired by a tough time in the workplace.

“My job in Italy was my first ‘baby’, it was a huge deal for me. But I developed some issues with a colleague and my reaction was to badmouth her. Then I realised that it was me who was behaving badly – so I drew an interpretation of the peribahasa about ‘spitting into the sky’ using Sketchbook for Galaxy [Note 3]. It continued from there,” says Hyrul.

His peribahasa can take anywhere between 10 minutes to an entire day to draw, depending on how inspired he feels.

“If I feel a proverb fits a situation I’m in, I just draw it. When I was a kid, I loved to draw and design fashion but was never interested in pursuing it as career.

After taking his university entrance exams, Hyrul went to the Aswara arts institute too study film. He tried his hand at production. “I finally wound up in advertising,” says Hrul, 27.

Now the series has taken on a life of its own. Social media, such as Instagram and Tumblr, has given it a wide audience, taking it well beyond Malaysia.

Hyrul was also featured on BBC’s website and his art is being shown until March 28 in “The Visual Series of Malay Proverbs” at Fabrica Features in Lisbon.

“The Visual Series of Malay Proverbs” was first shown at a two-day exhibition at Yasmin St Kong Heng Museum in Ipoh last August.

But despite its popularity, Hyrul doesn’t want to turn this into a job.

“I don’t want to spoil it with money because I started doing it out of sheer passion,” he maintains.

Some of his favourites are “meludah ke langit, akhirnya muka sendiri yang basah” (doing something foolish that backfires) and “mengikat perut” (binding the stomach, or to save money by eating less).

“Yesterday a musician asked me about album art. I’m considering it but I don’t want to make this as a money thing – I don’t even know how much to price things, I just give them away for free. I like it when people get inspired and want the art to be part of their life. I’m touched.”

This is just his hobby, he underlines, as he loves his job in advertising where he says he has just found his own voice.

“I don’t want to destroy that passion for art by making it my job. After the Lisbon exhibition I want to turn these proverbs into a book and maybe create an animation too.”

Hyrul also plans to expand the project, which has about 30 images, into a regional series, and has already been looking at the proverbs from countries like Thailand and Vietnam to interpret them in his own unique, colourful style.

Hyrul’s art is a means of expressing himself, an alternative to “just complaining on Facebook”. His art is a dizzying mix of impressionistic art and sleek ad campaigns, with an intensely Malaysian touch as he takes on topics like black magic, mythology and literature.

He enjoys exploring any kind of style and medium (“I like all of them!”), explaining that while some artists stick with one style, his youth spurs him on to explore his options.

There is a heartfelt piece about his late mother.

“I miss the way she gets angry with me. If I had the chance to talk to her again, that’s what I would want – for her to scold me. She gave me advice, but in a memorable way by scolding me. This and the Malay proverbs project really reflect who I am, my personality comes out.”

Hyrul is a little astonished by the praise his proverbs series has garnered, as it wasn’t about attention or fame.

“I just want people to be inspired and strive to be better. Some people don’t like my art and I knew from the start I’m not a great illustrator or painter – but I have a story to tell, I have a reason behind it, and I want people to know what it is. I don’t want to portray myself as the best painter. I do it to express myself, and hopefully someone else will like it. I just want people to like the stuff I do,” he says, joking that he preferred scolding to compliments (“must be a Malaysian thing!”).

And what’s next for the Sabak Bernam-raised lad? He is working on a new project for Vice magazine about dark love and black magic; and also wants to make a short film about his mother, who he describes as an “inspirational and practical woman” who always threw her support behind him and his endeavours.

“Beyond that, I want to explore human emotions, human stories, rather than pretend to care about other things. But I also want to explore that from the platform of advertising, since it’s so large. The industry, we need to do more for people. We must be real in everything,” he says.

On the Web:

http://www.instagram.com/malayproverbs

malayproverbs.tumblr.com

THEY WERE Indiana Jones’s most feared nemeses and scared off would-be Medusa fanciers.

Throughout history, snakes have represented peril, betrayal and sex, and now they are taking centre stage in a new Italian exhibition.

Luxury jeweller Bulgari has teamed up with Rome’s city hall for “SerpentiForm”, which runs until April 10 in a Neoclassical palace that once housed the political headquarters of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

Serpent-inspired jewels are on show alongside sculptures, paintings and even film costumes – like the creations worn by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1963 film “Cleopatra”, in homage to the Egyptian pharaoh who tradition has it committed suicide by persuading a venomous snake to bite her.

“This is the first exhibition in the world dedicated to the snake that brings together so many works of various media,” Bulgari CEO Jean-Christophe Babin said, adding that the brand had “always been inspired” by the scaly reptile.

While in some cultures snakes historically represented fertility – shedding their skin in a symbol of rebirth – they are more often than not depicted as untrustworthy.

The show hopes to capture the seductive talents of serpents like the one who persuaded Eve to eat forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, or Lord Voldemort’s fork-tongued pet in “Harry Potter”.

The exhibition is taking place at the Palazzo Braschi, a former papal palace located close to one of Rome’s best-known squares, Piazza Navona.

Constructed at the end of the 18th Century, the palace was sold to the new Italian state in 1871 and later used as Mussolini’s headquarters. After World War II it temporarily became home to hundreds of refugees who reportedly damaged the building’s frescoes by lighting fires to keep warm.

Dinh Thi Tham Poong has set aside the hand-made paper known as do, or sometimes poonah, on which she painted the scenes of ethnic life that made her famous. Her latest solo exhibition in Hanoi finds her exploring all sorts of materials – oil on canvas, ceramic fragments held together by embroidery, even bamboo baskets.

“Since 2008 I’ve been experimenting with new things, with oil and ceramics,” she says. And catchy titles: The exhibition is called “Destination Point of an Oblique Line”.

“When I look at something but don’t really concentrate on it, I get lost in my thoughts.” And, similarly, the new art represents fresh ways of seeing the world. “I perceive two ways of seeing. One is the real and the other is the imaginary – what one wants to see – the destination point. The two different points connect and disconnect, but should never be too far apart or too close,” says the 46-year-old.

The canvas of her oil paintings offers a completely different texture than the do paper, playing into the concept of altered perspectives and sensations.

“Like the Shadows on Water” has two figures sitting by Hanoi’s Hoan Kiem Lake absorbed in a newspaper, and the shadow they cast is embroidered and takes the form of a target, yet another point of concentration.

Portraits of ethnic women – and one of the artist – also appear in the show.

The small, golden ceramic pieces include a fingerprint held in place against canvas in much in the same way the artisans in her native village fix an object centrally in the loom around which they weave patterns.

Dominating the middle of the gallery is an enormous bamboo “nest” with triangular cushions arranged in a pattern. It’s a mandala of the universe, or perhaps a rendering of the sacred dance of Venus and Mars, the conjunction of the shapes suggesting the nature of the relationship.

“I want people to imagine entering the mandala basket and think about their interaction with the intersecting lines and shapes, exploring their own interconnectedness,” Poong says. “They’re all points of intersection – crossing, dividing and morphing into a new existence.”

Gallery director Suzanne Lecht suggests that Poong finds order in all aspects of life. Being “born of an ethnic Muong father and White Thi mother in the remote northern region of Lai Chu, her life began in nature, in close alignment with the seasons and the phases of the moon. Life was simple and free to align with the shifts in nature.

“Her new works are a departure in form, medium and presentation, but are once again a convergence of the intersection of the many paths or lines she’s crossed or encircled in her life.”

Born in 1970, Poong studied sculpture at the Hanoi Fine Arts College and has received several prizes for her work from the Ministry of Culture and Information. After graduating from the Vietnam Fine Arts University in Hanoi in 1993, she became quickly established as one of Vietnam’s leading female painters.

Yet Poong remembers clearly what it was like leaving her parents’ house to study in Hanoi. “I was 18 when I came to study art,” she says. “I cried a lot during those three years because I missed my family, but I finally understood that I’d grown up and had to become independent.

“Now I feel very lucky for having so many good friends and devoted teachers who helped me a lot during my difficult moments.”

The memories of Lai Chu have never faded. Her watercolours on do paper reveal that strong connection with trees and plants. Interestingly, though, her greatest artistic influence comes not from the real but the surreal. She admires the Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte above all others.

Like him, she often uses metaphysical devices to convey messages. There can be a challenging ambiguity in her images, but it’s clear enough what she sees with her vivid imagination.

Poong has often exhibited overseas and her works are in the permanent collections of museums in Singapore, Switzerland, Fukuoka in Japan, Illinois in the US and Salzburg, Austria.

BOX

“Destination Point of an Oblique Line” continues at the Art Vietnam Gallery on Ly Quoc Su in Hanoi until March 26.