Sophie Tea

Sophie Tea

Sophie Tea (born 1993) is a modern, contemporary artist famous for her Nude (2019) series, seeking to make women feel more secure about their bodies by conveying messages of self love, inclusivity and beauty in the uniqueness of the female form.

Sophie TeaBorn Wolverhampton, England,1993 Education Aston UniversityKnown For Painting Notable Work Nudes (2019) Send Nudes (2023)

Biography

Sophie Tea is a British artist born in Wolverhampton, England in 1993, but was raised in Birmingham. Her art features bright, vibrant colours with drips and splashes. She studied business at Aston University and began her career as a consultant at an analytical firm after graduation. Growing up, Sophie Tea was drawn to the art world, finding comfort in her school notebook doodles, and experimenting with various mediums. Tea began seriously pursuing a painting career when she lived in New York City, in 2016. Without an art degree, she was rejected from every gallery she applied to. Her very first studio was shared with another artist, where she worked 15 hours a day. However, through a supportive family and social media, she was able to pursuit her childhood dream of becoming a well-known artist. Over the past few years, she has used social media to launch her career and create a brand for herself. She was able to own her own studios in both Manchester, and Sydney. She has also held multiple sell-out solo exhibitions in both London and Sydney. Furthermore, she has collaborated with numerous companies such as TopShop, Boohoo, Vogue, Skinny Dip, and The Gypsy Shrine, Playboy, and Adidas. Her work has also been featured in magazines such as the BBC, Cosmopolitan, The Guardian, Hypebae, and 1883 Magazine. Her work is influenced by other contemporary artists such as Tracey Emin, and Damien Hisrt.

Career

Challenging Traditional Art Spaces

Sophie Tea has a unique approach to traditional art spaces for feminist voices. The art world has historically favoured white, male artists, leading to an exclusion of women in educational and institutional art spaces. However, with modern day technology, female artists have a new kind of art space for self-representation that is easily accessible to everyone, regardless of education, gender, race, or sexuality. Sophie Tea used social media as a platform for launching her career as an artist. Noticing a gap in the art market for people who wanted to buy art but did not have access to galleries or felt too intimidated to go into a gallery, she capitalized off of platforms like Instagram to showcase and sell her artwork, pioneering innovative strategies. As soon as she finishes a piece, it gets posted to Instagram, along with its title, price, size, and medium. One marketing technique she developed was the #100DayAbstractChallenge, where she posted a new piece of abstract art every day for 100 days, with the first person to comment “buy” was given the opportunity to purchase it. She even used her business degree to her advantage by developing an app facilitating direct connections between artists and buyers. Sophie Tea completely diverges from the traditional art industry, where galleries take commissions off of sold pieces. Instead, she works as a completely independent artist, hiring her own team and determining how she runs her own business and company finances. Sophie Tea has also expanded her career by starting NFT collections, rather than only selling physical pieces of art. Her first NFT was titled Sophie (2022), which was part of her 4 piece collection, Women (2022). She also has a 3 piece collection titled Grow (2022), which will be followed by Flash, a soon-to-be released NFT collection.

Major Milestones

Some of the major milestones in her career include a trip she took to India in 2016, the summer of her graduation. Due to a shortage of money, she offered to paint over graffiti on the side of a hostel in exchange for accommodations during her travels. Despite not having painted since high school, she ended up creating a multi-coloured cow, due to its cultural significance in India. She posted the mural to Facebook when she returned from her trip. It received a lot of attention online, sparking inquiries from friends and family members, who wanted her to paint pictures of their pets. Tea eventually went from painting pets for friends and family to staging exhibits focused on themes like extinction. However, Sophie Tea really rose to fame in 2017, when her festival-makeup-artist friend used her as a model, placing glitter and jewels over her bare chest at Coachella. Pictures of her from the event quickly went viral. Furthermore, a meeting with a potential investor in early 2017 encouraged her to continue pursing a career in art. The opening of her first gallery on Carnaby Street in London in 2020, marked a pivotal moment in establishing her own vibrant pink art space, which she named the Sophie Tea Art Gallery. Her goal in doing so, was to create an inclusive environment for people of all ages and gender, where they could explore their identities and connect with others who shared similar experiences.

Themes and Process

Her most well-known art works centre on the female form. Inspired by her own struggles with body image from a young age, Sophie Tea sought to provide a platform for diverse representations of the female form, aiming to empower and uplift other women who may have faced similar challenges. Her goal was to ensure that no one would ever have to feel about their bodies the way she did about hers. By showcasing bodies that had often been underrepresented or overlooked in mainstream media, she attempts to reshape societal perceptions of beauty, particularly targeting younger generations to promote body positivity and acceptance of diverse body types. She challenges the common misconception that there is only one "ideal" body type. Her paintings reverse traditional paintings of the female nude, which had been painted through the male gaze. As observed by the Guerrilla Girls in 1989, 85% of nudes painted were female, but less than 5% of the artists were female. Sophie Tea's art reclaims the female body from male objectification within historical art practices. Her work is created using acrylic paint, pouring medium, alcohol and silicon oil. She then manipulates the materials on the canvas by using a heat gun, creating large, spontaneous abstractions. Pink emerges as a prominent motif in her creations, symbolizing both pride in femininity and a reclamation of traditionally gendered associations. Her pieces are distinguished by bold, expressive colours and by employing colours as representations of emotion, she refuses a predetermined palette, allowing the work to have its own agency. Oftentimes, Tea introduces hues that disrupt and complicate the composition.

Notable Works

Sophie Tea's first major art show was Extinction (2018) which featured large, colourful, animal portraits. She received 'official supporter' status from the World Wildlife Fund charity, and held an auction for some of her pieces of art during the event, with proceeds going towards wildlife conservation initiatives. However, Tea’s most notable work is her Nude (2019) collection. She initiated the project in 2019, and carried it throughout her career. This collection features the female figure, painted in bright, bold colours, in multiple forms. She began her nude paintings by trying to search for muses online, but only found pornographic and explicit material. As a result, she decided to turn to her Instagram followers for help, asking them to send her nudes "in the name of art". The next day, she was met with over 1,000 nude images in her DM's. Some were accompanied by personal messages explaining the significance of their participation and why they felt it was necessary to share their photos. She was sent photos by women struggling with their body image, amputees, cancer survivors who had mastectomies, women who had self-harm scars, stoma bags, stretch marks, and transgender women. Her objective was to amplify women's narratives, and tell their untold stories and experiences as women. She wanted them to feel comfortable sharing their struggles and create a sense of self-affirmation in women through art. Fostering a connection in her viewers was important to her, wanting them to recognize themselves within her work. From this project, came Send Nudes (2023), a pink coffee table book, comprised of a collection of 500 carefully selected works of art that celebrate feminine nudity, and explore the complex interplay between female bodies and commodification. Each book comes with a gold bookmark, that has been hand splattered by Sophie Tea herself. Following the success of Nudes (2019), Grow (2022) is one of her later collections. It offers a visual exploration of female transformation and growth through the abstraction of plants, such as flowers, grass, and mushrooms. She creates a colourful representation of women's experiences throughout their journey of womanhood. In this exhibition, Sophie Tea explores mixed media, by combining augmented reality, light, sound, and scent to transform the space into a forest. The artwork serves as a reflection of what it means to be a woman, and what it’s like to grow and flourish as a woman in today's society.

Reception

Although the reception by the public to her art has been mainly positive, Tea still faces criticisms about her career path and occasionally receives hateful messages online. Crititcs may argue that her work is provocative and perpetuates feminine stereotypes. Others may be skeptical of her quick rise to fame, and question whether she is a feminist artist or just a media sensation. Additionally, some may critique the commercialization of her work, impacting the authenticity of her message. Furthermore, there have been controversies circulating on social media platforms about the boundary between what is considered art and what is considered explicit content. Over her career, many of her artworks, videos, and images had been taken down or censored due to social media policies. This raises concerns about the complexities of the implementation of safety guidelines to protect users from harmful content, while still allowing room for the freedom of artistic expression.

Solo Exhibitions

List curated from SophieTeaArt.com

• Extinction - London 2018
• Cell Out - NYC 2019
• Glitterati - London 2019
• Chocolate - London 2019
• Send Nudes - London 2019
• Gallery #1 - London 2020
• Gallery #2 - London 2021
• Women - Sydney 2021
• Women - London 2021
• Gallery #3 - London 2022
• Grow - Sydney 2022
• Grow - London 2022