Cj Hendry doesn’t do the white cube. After abandoning her studies in architecture and finance, her big break came from a series of lifelike black-and-white drawings of Chanel bags from her time working at one of the label’s boutiques. The drawings were a hit on Instagram, helping launch her debut exhibition of them in 2014 and ultimately kicking off her now-established tradition of creating experiential art shows that captivate the imagination.
A few years later, Hendry presented drawings of Rorschach-like paint smears in the psychological tests’ splotchy style. To see the show, viewers traversed a white-padded-wall bouncy castle that served as an eerie expression of the inspiration Hendry took from childhood “squish paintings” and the darker implications of Hermann Rorschach’s studies of the unconscious mind. Then, in 2021, she created a floor-to-ceiling pink beauty parlor, complete with Ultrafragola mirrors and a chocolate bar that explored the transformative power of wigs. “I enjoy creating conceptual exhibitions that take elements of the series and blow them up on a massive scale,” Hendry says. “I’m bored by traditional galleries hanging artworks on white walls.”
