Cj Hendry's Rorschach: An Act of Lazy Exploitation

Disclaimer: The cover artwork for the blog post is my own

@cj_hendry. Whiting on Hermes. 2015.

CJ Hendry is a hyperrealistic artist, who works in pen and more recently, colored pencil. She is well known for her presence on Instagram, popping up on the platform in 2012, and gaining traction in 2015. Due to her start on social media she is not “accepted” by the traditional art world, and frankly she doesn’t care. Without the approval of major galleries and auction houses she has been able to make quite a name for herself. She began with large-scale drawings in black felt tip pen, using her self-developed “scribbling” technique. The subject of these drawings were recognizable products from high end brands, a Prada shopping bag, a pair of Nike Mags, Dior scarves, etc. It wasn’t these products that drew in an audience. For people like myself, it was the way she presented herself and her work on Instagram that appealed to people. She has actively posted since blowing up, always bringing followers along in her process. I first found her when she was doing her series of Hermes plates, featuring 50foodsin50days, and she stuck to that, creating a drawing every single day.

I respect Cj Hendry as an artist for her discipline, skill, creativity, and controversial nature. She has never been afraid to do what she wants, and I respect that. The art market already dismisses her, and she has a following, so why not? When she dipped a pair of Nike Air Mags in black paint for her project sneakerdead (yes those are the self-lacing shoes from Back to the Future) I was fascinated, not offended. For sneakerheads, it was another story. In the end it was for a good cause and created a beautiful drawing in the process. When she was copyrighted for her Warhol series, I was astonished at how clever her response was. This kind of creativity and subtle button pushing has made her someone I looked up to, as the underdog who ascended to the top. This is why I was surprised to say the least on April 10th, when she opened her latest exhibition, Rorschach.

My Squish Painting

She started this project by documenting the process of creating pieces, as she typically does. Her work in recent years is more involved, like the Warhol project, there are many moving pieces. This was the same with Rorschach. She started by creating squish paintings with children at an event she hosted. When she started posting about her new project I took it upon myself to make my own squish paintings, just because they looked like so much fun (they were). Hendry then moved on, to drawing the children’s squish paintings in colored pencil, making them look like large scale paintings that she likened to Rorschach tests. She had these turned into beautiful duo-chrome prints.

@cj_hendry 2019

The trouble started for me with the installation process. In her more recent work like Monochrome the installation is of equal value to the artwork, and in that case was done extremely well. I was excited then, to see what was to come for Rorschach. I was shocked, to see on her Instagram a 3,000 square foot bouncy castle, made to look like the white padded walls of a psych ward. (I hadn’t seen it at first but around the same time she had posted a photo of herself flailing in a straitjacket as well). I was more nervous for what was to come than offended by the bouncy house in and of itself. Still, I found comfort in the fact that I wasn’t the only one worried. Amidst the praise in the comments there were a few people that were also concerned. Instagram user, laulemonade asking “are you actually laughing at mental illness and going to encourage clichés about it?”. Another user, peachigum stating “Making fun of mental illnesses isn't a personality trait in case you forgot”.

@cj_hendry 2019

Since that post, as the exhibition has opened, and all of the details have come out, I am truly disappointed. Between the “patient admission” wristbands labelled “Rorschach Psychological Institute” and her kitschy Rorschach socks, the exhibition is a mess. It features outdated stereotypes that victimize an already marginalized population. When researching the exhibition I found some sites reporting that the drawings are titled after horror movies, but her website refers to the edition titles only as Cards I-X. Let’s all hope that these are false reports and that Hendry does not reveal these titles to be true, as this would be just another degree of gross ignorance.

The saddest part is that none of the publications that did articles on her noted it being controversial, but rather endearing, some praising her for tackling mental health issues! The online publication, estliving quoted Hendry for their article having said,

“There is little difference between an infant and an insane adult: both have undeveloped thoughts and blissful ignorance, both live in a playful space where they have not made sense of the world. There is so much freedom in ‘seeing what you want to see’.”

I'll let that statement speak for itself. What she’s doing is not cute, it’s not tongue-in-cheek or edgy, it’s downright offensive. It doesn’t feel like she’s bringing anything to light, it just feels like lazy exploitation. Frankly, we should have seen this all coming from the same person who regularly refers to their pencil collecting as OCD.