The Orangutan House

The Orangutan House, an studio-gallery of Charles CHAM , is a landmark and a must-see for all art lovers and tourists to Malacca. It houses the contemporary paintings and a large collection of art t-shirts.

Charles CHAM started painting at the age of five inspired by the first movie he ever saw. It was a story about an artist with a magic brush and everything he painted became alive. He painted birds and they flew away. He painted fish and they swam away in the river. Finally he painted a woman, she became alive and they fell in love. When Charles came home that day after the movie, he started to draw a portrait of the painter on the floor with some cake powder belonging to his mother. That was his first portrait.

Charles CHAM’s works are based on the philosophy of Yin and Yang – the duality of life and the attraction of opposites. Just like the Yin and Yang symbol, there is no fixed top-bottom position for his paintings and can be hung in both directions.