Cj Hendry made her first sale from her childhood bedroom in Brisbane, Australia. She was 26 at the time, posting her art to Instagram, and the buyers reached out about a hyper-realistic drawing of a pair of R.M.Williams boots. Hendry sold it for about $8,900. A decade later, the mother of two commands six- to seven-figure sums for her works, which often can take longer than 80 hours to complete. (There’s reportedly a five-year waiting list for her pieces.) Hendry works with anywhere from 6 to 20 full-time employees and has expanded her practice to include interactive installations that draw thousands of people willing to wait hours to gain entry.
Hendry, who was once a Chanel retail employee, has called herself a “full-time shopaholic...utterly obsessed with luxury product.” She sold all her high-end clothing and accessories to start her career in her parents’ home. Her work was a dream fit for the early days of Instagram: Her early posts displayed her hyper-realistic drawings of an Hermès bicycle, a bottle of Chanel No. 5, Saint Laurent patent leather lace-ups, and Louboutin high-tops. She either purchased or borrowed all the merchandise she drew, kept a select few pieces, and sold the rest on eBay. Hendry hasn’t signed with a gallery, something nearly unheard-of for an artist of her stature. Instead of shows with artists’ statements and vague language, she’s opted to put it out there for all—or her 744,000 followers, at least—to see. “What has really helped is that hyper-realism is perfectly situated to work well on Instagram. It’s easy to consume; it’s easy to look at,” she says.
Her approach is playful, toying with the idea of fame both in her art and in the way she presents it. She has posted hundreds of images and videos in which she shares fascinating peeks into her work. She reveals her choice of pens and pencils, her inspiration (most notably the work of Robert Longo), her customized drawing table, and much more—including the fact that she insured her right hand for $10 million. At one point, she set up a live cam in her Brooklyn studio to allow her followers a 24/7 glimpse into the action.
Since 2018, fans have been able to get one step closer to her work. “I was starting to feel like a one-trick pony,” she says of her move toward large-scale installations. “I felt I had more to say, and I felt I had more to give creatively. I can do more than just drawing.” So she built “Monochrome,” a seven-room house within a 20,000-square-foot warehouse in Brooklyn. Every surface of every room featured a different ultrasaturated Pantone color, from the walls to the midcentury furniture, floors, and props—alongside Hendry’s matching drawings of the corresponding Pantone color swatches. The über-sensory, tactile experience drew crowds for three days.
Last year’s “Plaid” installation was an indoor playground. Visitors donned plaid grippy socks (a gift with the $10 entry fee) before entering and facing choices—to swing or slide in a pit of foam cubes? An introvert, Hendry took in the scene in an incognito getup of T-shirt, jeans, and baseball cap. “Being able to build more conceptual [works] that you can physically touch and feel and walk through has given me more joy than I can even explain. I really enjoy a physical thing that people can come and experience,” she says.
In December, Hendry debuted her first permanent public artwork: “Hoops,” a treelike, vibrant blue basketball hoop commissioned by the city of Miami and installed on the beach in the Wynwood Arts District. She’ll unveil new public works this year as part of the renovation of New York’s Penn Station, and in April will display “Public Pool,” her next interactive exhibition. Imagine an inflatable swimming pool filled with water to wading height, installed for three days in the desert outside Las Vegas.
“She’s contagious,” raves Christine Miele, Phillips’ retail sales director of e-commerce. The auction house debuted Dropshop with Hendry last August, a “once they’re gone, they’re gone” business model of exclusive online releases of artists’ works. The drop was 100 bronze crowns and one large-scale crown drawing, which was sold to a Phillips client. The bronzes, priced at $6,250 each, sold out within 24 hours of their release, but not before 21 were given away in an open-to-the-public treasure hunt. Close to 1,000 visitors were invited to scavenge through 50,000 inflatable plastic crowns in search of one of the 21 labeled crowns that could be redeemed for a free bronze. Hendry, via Instagram, had asked for volunteers to help inflate the crowns—and drew fans from as far away as Mexico. “There’s nobody who can hype something more than she can. I love her style, her intuition about social media and how people are going to respond,” Miele says. “We had 2 million views of one of the behind-the-scenes posts that Cj made. There was so much energy behind it, and a genuine excitement.” Hendry took selfies with fans while surreptitiously wearing one of the winning crowns. Someone asked if they could have it. Hendry handed it over, then jumped up and down, overjoyed someone had scored.
A version of this story appears in the March 2024 issue of ELLE.
