Sophie Tea is a London-based artist whose work honours the female form, with a focus on celebrating the diversity that distinguishes all of our bodies. In 2021, Sophie organised six “Nudie” catwalks, which featured models wearing only body paint that she’d meticulously swirled over their naked bodies.
Her latest project saw her create ‘SEND NUDES’, a coffee table book featuring over 500 images that celebrate feminine nudity, as well as the nitty gritty relationship we all have with self-love and body positivity.
Here, she shares an exclusive essay about her own body image, the power of feminist art, and the life lessons she learned from painting 200+ naked women’s bodies.
Since 2019 I have worked toward a singular goal: make women feel a tiny bit nicer about themselves. My ‘Send Nudes’ catwalk shows, and the collection of art they inspired were conceived to celebrate the beautiful diversity of the female form. I’ve read thousands of essays from ‘nudie’ applicants (women volunteering to literally bare all in the name of art). Each applicant told a unique story.
I’ve painted on over 200 naked bodies and watched these women walk down a catwalk in front of thousands of people. I was completely in awe. The ‘Nudies’ came from different backgrounds and diverse life experiences and were tied together by the desire to celebrate their own bodies.
Self-love is a term thrown about so flippantly in media, from global marketing campaigns to artists like me shouting about its importance to anyone who cares to listen. The truth is self-love is hard to achieve and just as difficult to maintain. It has a complex and different meaning to us at different points in time. Simply practising self-love can be hard, especially when it comes to the relationship we have with our bodies.