Palesa Monareng
I’m Palesa Monareng, a London-based Illustrator, previously working as T.S Abe
My personal practice explores my relationship with the webs emergent phenomena - from it’s vice grip on the minds eye, to homogenised beauty ideals & an oft adversarial relationship with my online ‘id’.
While my public-facing career has been defined by an ability to humanize the interface, delivering illustration & animation for The New York Times, Wealthsimple and Amazon, my internal engine has been my 20-year longitudinal self-portrait project, my private R&D lab. With my own likeness as the constant variable, I’ve explored how human identity evolves as it passes through the filters of two decades of digital transformation. The project is now a developing manuscript, represented by Janklow & Nesbit
Reach: A global digital footprint exceeding 380 million views on GIPHY, 500k+ views on Behance and a 100k+ community on Instagram
When not drawing you can find me hiking with my vizsla, Herzog, updating my LETTERBOXD and snacking on Fuet. If you have a project in mind, I’d love to hear from you.
palesa@palesamonareng.com
Client List
Selected Press
CREATIVEBOOM, INSTAGRAM, VICE, VISI, DESIGNCOLLECTOR
work with me
Live drawing sessions
Portrait sessions and life drawing for members' clubs, companies and events. I bring the easels, the paper, and twenty years of drawing people from life. Also available for graphic recording, your conference or summit, captured in graphite as it happens.
Talks
On drawing by hand in a machine-made visual culture. Craft, identity, and what twenty years of self-portraiture taught me about who we become online. For conferences, universities, and company teams.
Commissions
Portraits & animation for editorial, publishing and brand work. Clients include the New York Times, Nike, Netflix, Tiffany & Co. and Amazon.