What Is the Self Proclaimed 'Art Hoe?'

A new trend has been sweeping through Instagram—that of the “art hoe.” The “art hoe” is a self proclaimed group of people (often of colour, although many Caucasians also identify) that typically love some form of art. It is for people who sometime do not feel as if they belong, such as LGBTQ + people.

They have a specific style taste, one that is often referred to as being “aesthetic” or “tumblr.” This consists of the colour yellow, mom jeans, sandals, and of course, the typical fjallraven kanken rucksack that has swept across social media. No doubt you will have seen this somewhere, as they have become fashionable items to wear, whether or not you enjoy the ‘beliefs’ that come with it.

Of course, with this comes the wave of people who call themselves “art hoes,” although they don’t actually enjoy art. As mentioned before, they do it for the “aesthetic” and don’t understand what this movement stands for. They don’t realise what this radical and empowering movement is: “artistic expression as a weapon against cultural stereotyping” founded by non- binary people of colour trying to promote self love.

Tumblr is infamous for taking things with meaning and importance and turning them in to nothing more than an aesthetic. They did that with feminism, and unsurprisingly, they have done it with the art hoe movement.

I’ve never really been a huge fan of Tumblr, but every so often, I’ll open up the app and do a little bit of looking around. One day during an early morning spent Tumblr scrolling, I came across a bunch of posts hashtagged “art hoe.” They were all photos of teenage white girls with pastel hair and space buns taking photos of their Fjallraven Kanken backpacks and Vincent Van Gogh socks. Pretty normal, it seemed. I was interested, so naturally, I googled it and what I read shocked me.

It often gets seen as being about the material objects —such as cacti, yellow backpacks, and socks with famous paintings embroidered on them. This is the reason many join—not for the emotional group, but for style that comes with it. But really it is not about what you own, it is about what you believe in and how you treat others and yourself.

It was made as a way for creative voices, who are far too often silenced, to express themselves and break down stereotypes. The sad thing is, I would have had no idea about that history if I hadn’t looked it up.Tumblr twisted it into just another aesthetic hashtag dominated by white people that call themselves activists, because they change their bios to say #feminist when it suits them.

They erased the very history that made it so special. Many don’t realise what they are doing when they hashtag their post #arthoe, or the importance of this movement as more than just a selfie. It’s actually getting the point where most people who wear that “art hoe” aesthetic don’t even know where it came from or why it was created in the first place.