Here’s the tea: why Sophie Tea is one of the hottest contemporary artists

Sophie Tea has become a global social media phenomenon in the past couple of years since going viral for her trademark Charity Shop Friday series, gracing red carpets and staging some of her own shows. She rose to fame in 2017 for her dazzling Coachella look, with gems, jewels and glitter adorning her bare chest. Since then, Sophie has become TikTok-famous, painted live at events, and worked in collaboration with various big brands.

The UK (and recently international) series Charity Shop Friday sees Sophie choosing a charity shop with a cause meaningful to her or her following. She chooses a seemingly unassuming item from the shop, buys it, takes it away to then bring it back transformed with her signature painting style – paints and oils which combine floral motifs, abstract brush strokes, and sometimes a little glitter finished with some paint splatters. She then posts where and when she’ll be so she is welcomed by her followers (and any members of the wider public who happen to be there), giving everyone a raffle ticket to win the opportunity to repurchase the product she has revived.

Sophie is keen to keep connectivity and authenticity at the heart of her work while also working with and for small businesses in an effort to make art more accessible to purchase, mentioning: “I just wanted to make it easier to go about that buying process”. She believes anything can be art. She also wants to give back to the art world and her audience as they give to her with art shows, experiences, and her miniseries. She is passionate about empowering women and telling their stories, seeing them as muses and wanting women to feel confident and sexy in their own bodies, which can be seen and celebrated in her nude art works. She suggested in an interview that art is “all about relationships we have with ourselves… if we feel confident in ourselves, whatever that means, we can change the world”.

Sophie saw the social space as an untapped market and revolutionised what it meant to be an artist. She not only goes live as she works but is regularly interactive with her audience through her content, and she has also dared to explore digital art mediums which are being tried and developed. You are truly a part of her journey and process as she invites you to watch her work, follow her process, and see how she creates some of her most unique (and sometimes challenging) pieces.

I was lucky enough to meet her on one of her Charity Shop Fridays in Lisbon at the start of my second semester of my year abroad, and she is truly a kind, genuine and humble artist. Her creation that day was reviving a teal sewing machine which she transformed with blue, green, and purple hues and long flowing brush strokes. She took the time to talk to and involve everyone in the space – from her followers to the volunteers and general public at Dona Ajuda (a charity shop warehouse in Lisbon). She is one of the artists that has transformed the contemporary art world and the way in which artists use social media platforms to expand their businesses and audience, all while staying closely connected (for instance, her Instagram broadcast channel ‘communitea’), and authentically herself.