Text: Clara Yip
In an art world often preoccupied with the serious and the conceptual, Australian artist CJ Hendry is staging a revolution in pink in her own terms. With her first collectable toy series, juju, she’s not launching just any bag charm—she’s orchestrating a homecoming to the unbridled joy of childhood imagination. At Phillips Hong Kong, her pop-up exhibition transforms the gallery into a tactile daydream, proving that the most sophisticated art might be the kind that invites you to play.
The space is a symphony in a single shade: an all-pink wonderland where giant, stuffed jujus lounge on plush foam flooring like gentle, otherworldly guardians. A maze of canned jujus lines vibrant, supermarket-style shelves, while a 2-metre-tall mascot of the character presides over the scene. The air is sweet with cotton candy, and the experience is less a viewing than an immersion—a deliberate, delightful sensory guardian, friend and charm that speaks directly to nostalgia.
Known for drawings that trick the eye, Hendry has always been an artist of desire and material culture. Here, she simply makes that desire tangible. The juju character itself—a mysterious being with one eye obscured by a flower—becomes a perfect vessel for this dialogue. It invites connection, serving as a quiet muse amid digital noise.
The project masterfully blurs the lines between fine art and collectible culture. The centrepiece juju Edition Sculpture, a handcrafted vinyl piece limited to 100 worldwide, is presented with the gravitas of a museum artefact. Yet, it exists alongside blind-box bag charms and an endless supply of whimsy, challenging the hierarchy of artistic value. It asks a compelling question: Why can’t artistic expression be found in the playful objects we carry with us every day?
More than a launch, jujus are a homecoming for Hendry, whose relationship with Hong Kong deepens with this third major project. It reflects the city’s own vibrant energy—a place where innovative, cutting-edge design and playful fun are not mutually exclusive, but intrinsically linked. By taking art off the walls and placing it into our hands, CJ Hendry doesn’t just offer a new collectible. She offers a reminder that the greatest luxury, and perhaps the most radical artistic statement, is the permission to experience pure, childlike joy, healing the inner child within all of us.
