Henry’s creative practice is a visual one that’s expansive and genre-defying – mostly he creates lush, far-reaching slices of life like his futuristic music video “Earth Mother, Sky Father” (which debuted on the fashion and culture site NOWNESS) and the motion-capture dance performance (and accompanying video) “If Not Now”. He’s done sculpture, dance and installations, and VFX for the artist collective Saint Heron. He’s exhibited at various galleries and film festivals globally, and been shortlisted for the ADC Award, was a 2020 Shots Nominee for Best Director, and that same year was a fellow for the Sundance New Frontier Story Lab.

His work explores humanity in the face of encroaching technology, race and otherness, memory and the future, all in ways poetic, thought-provoking and deeply personal. “World building is really interesting to me,” he says. “And how can I weave my own personal story back into cinema. And at the same time open it up to something that can be part of a bigger conversation.”

Henry grew up in Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC, to Jamaican immigrant parents – his father was raised in London and his mother on the Caribbean island nation. While he doesn’t recall a strong artistic presence in his life growing up in the traditional sense, he does remember the influence of his father being a builder, working on cars and in home construction.

“He introduced me to drawing at this different scale,” Henry says of his father. “Because he was working with architects. But also building is such a tactile practice. And so that showed me two aspects of creation, and I am always trying to find a level of balance in my own practice.”

Beyond his father, Henry says that video games, sneakers and his sister’s flair for illustration were early inspirations. Video games opened his mind to the ways technology could assist in the “world building” aspect of art, while sneakers were a way that product design could have an outsize cultural impact.

“I remember this pair of Jordan 17s came out, and if you owned a pair, it meant you were really doing something,” Henry says. “And my uncle bought them for me and they came in this case – a silver case, not like a shoe box, like a suitcase, and there was a CD in there. It was so holistic, like the physical artifact, the digital aspect, bringing in music. And then you could wear the shoes. That was a huge moment where a lightbulb went off, where I was like, ‘Oh, someone thinks about all these things and how they fit together and how it gets to us.’”

Throughout college Henry studied architecture, but he was also pulled toward filmmaking. “I was always searching for my way of designing and my way of impacting the larger conversation,” he says. “This whole time I was making short videos, but it didn’t have a place within architecture in the way I was studying. But to me, architecture and film go hand-in-hand, like cinema and scenic design.”

Henry has since carved out a path for himself that embraces all the touchstones from his personal history, ranging from his Caribbean ancestry to the world-building storytelling techniques of video games, to the hype-inducing mania of sneaker culture. “I need to make something that I like, first, and second, that is coming from an honest place,” he says. “I think [art] is about a lived life, and how that is expressed onto a medium. We’re all like snowballs, in a way, collecting data and information. It’s like, what was that experience I had or that story I heard, and how can it influence a piece I’m working on.”

He’s also inspired by painters, such as Mr Noah Davis. “I love the way that Noah would paint something fully, and then look at it and say, ‘Hmm, this ain’t it,’ and then paint over it. And that is such a practice of letting go, which is so hard for people. That really inspired me.”

As for the future, Henry keeps himself open. “I’d love to make a big Hollywood blockbuster,” he says with a laugh. “To work at that level is an incredible opportunity. And at the same time, I want to make things for my people, for myself. One of my friends talked about the triangle of being an artist – from working on a feature film to an instillation, there should be no separation between the things that you can make. Like the Spike Jonze effect, you can make a movie, a commercial, a comedy special.

“I think that level of freedom is inspiring,” he adds. “And I would love to work at that level.”