Monique Heystek

I’m a visual artist based in Cape Town.

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I create bold, cubist-inspired works that reframe the human figure, especially the masculine, through a lens of beauty and strength.

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My work turns its gaze to the human figure, specifically the masculine in an era where digital connection replaces community and few truly look at one another. I want my artworks to make people look again.

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As a female artist and life drawing host, my engagement with the male form is an act of agency and reverence. Life drawing is not observational habit for me, but a sacred practice and one rooted in attention, as well as the ethical weight of truly seeing another human being. To me, a well-sculpted, muscular body is not mere ornament, it is a sacred emblem of virility. It embodies humanity’s will to shape not only the body but the world around it. To me it represents hope.

 

Through oil pastel and oil paint and the raw, in-the-moment experiences of life drawing, I depict men not as stereotypes or relics of outdated power, but as beings with the capacity for beauty and strength. My portraits are invitations to rise, to meet the gaze, to carry oneself with purpose.