HAUI
HAUI | |
|---|---|
| Born | Howard J. Davis December 2, 1990 |
| Occupation | Multidisciplinary artist |
| Notable work |
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| Awards |
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| Website | www |
HAUI (born Howard J. Davis)[1] is a Canadian multidisciplinary artist who directs, designs, and devises cross-disciplinary work. His practice explores themes of race, gender, identity, and sexual orientation, and engages with underrepresented narratives, mythologies, and histories.[2]
Early life
[edit]Born in Bath, Somerset, HAUI is a graduate of Toronto Metropolitan University.[3]
Career
[edit]HAUI’s notable works include his 2017 short film C’est Moi, which explores the life of Marie-Josèphe Angélique. It engages with Canada’s legacy of slavery and systemic racism, using symbolic storytelling to foreground suppressed historical narratives.[4] Internationally, the film was recognized for its visual symbolism, poetry, and educational value.[5]
HAUI directed his documentary feature-film debut MixedUp. The film was co-produced with trans filmmaker Jack Fox and produced in association with OUTtv (Canada).[6] It examines mixed-race identity, queerness, and personal history through a multidisciplinary lens. Etalk host Traci Melchor praised the film’s ability to “allow people to begin to heal.”[7] He also directed and devised the 2SLGBTQIA+ installation Private Flowers, commissioned by the City of Toronto for Pride 2023. The work centered on queer histories and memorialization through movement, memory and music.[8]
In 2024, HAUI wrote, directed, and co-composed Aportia Chryptych: A Black Opera for Portia White, a theatrical work created in collaboration with conductor-composer Sean Mayes.[9] The piece, which centers on African Nova Scotian contralto Portia White, premiered at the Canadian Opera Company and was described by Opera Canada as “an exciting testament to the wealth of innovative creativity alive in our local contemporary opera… showcas[ing] more diverse voices.”[10] It received the 2025 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Opera/Musical and Outstanding Ensemble in an Opera.[11]
In 2025, HAUI was an artist-in-residence at The Watermill Center in New York, an interdisciplinary laboratory for the arts founded by avant-garde director Robert Wilson (director).[12] That same year, HAUI premiered the installation Aunt Harriet: An Ontario Oratorio.[13] The work is inspired by Harriet Miller, a Black woman who lived in rural southern Ontario in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and features dub poet Ahdri Zhina Mandiela in the title role. Blending poetry, portraiture, and performance, the project reflects what scholar Saidiya Hartman terms critical fabulation—the merging of historical record and imagination to recover suppressed histories.[14] Through this approach, HAUI and mandiela highlight the presence, commonness, and fullness of Black women’s lives within Canadian history. As HAUI told CBC Radio, “History is what is recorded: Myth is what is remembered”.[15] a reflection of his broader practice, which blurs the line between fact and imagination to restore erased histories.
Awards
[edit]2023 Isadore Sharp Outstanding Recent Graduate Award.[3]
2025 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Opera/Musical and Outstanding Ensemble in an Opera[11]
References
[edit]- ^ "Fifteen Questions Interview with HAUI". 15 Questions. Retrieved 11 July 2025.
- ^ "Q & A: HAUI™ Discusses Shedding Light on Underrepresented Figures Through Art". OperaWire. 11 March 2025. Retrieved 11 July 2025.
- ^ a b "HAUI – Alumni – Toronto Metropolitan University". Retrieved 11 July 2025.
- ^ Melissa Gonik (27 March 2017). "New film takes a much-needed glance into Canada's uncomfortable past with racism and slavery". This Magazine. Retrieved 24 July 2025.
- ^ Bataille, Eugénie (2017). "C'est Moi: Requiem pour Angélique d'Howard J. Davis". Amina Magazine (Print) (in French) (571): 58–59.
- ^ "Film review: Mixed↑ turns the search for identity into a provocative and artful experiment". Stir. 10 November 2020. Retrieved 11 July 2025.
- ^ "MixedUp on eTalk". CTV’s eTalk. March 2021. Retrieved 24 July 2025.
- ^ "Fort York's 'Private Flowers': new installation illuminates a his-story that (used to) dare not speak its name". Toronto Star. 24 July 2023. Retrieved 11 July 2025.
- ^ "Aportia Chryptych tells an old Canadian story in a new way". The Globe and Mail. 18 June 2024. Retrieved 11 July 2025.
- ^ "Canadian Opera Company: Aportia Chryptych celebrates her legacy while foregrounding Black Canadian history". Opera Canada. 17 June 2024. Retrieved 11 July 2025.
- ^ a b "From a Mahabharata sweep to a Gen Z musical theatre boom, here's how the 2025 Dora Awards played out". The Globe and Mail. 30 June 2025. Retrieved 11 July 2025.
- ^ "2025 Artists-in-Residence". The Watermill Center. Retrieved 13 September 2025.
- ^ "Culture : Regard sur les aînés noirs à Guelph dans ce nouveau projet". ICI Radio-Canada Première. 10 October 2025. Retrieved 13 October 2025.
- ^ Hartman, Saidiya (2008). "Venus in Two Acts". Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism. 12 (2): 1–14. doi:10.1215/07990537-2008-000.
- ^ "How Black and Queer Artists Embrace Myth-Making to Fill in Missing Canadian History". CBC Radio Day 6. 10 October 2025. Retrieved 13 October 2025.
External links
[edit]- 1990 births
- Living people
- 21st-century Canadian dramatists and playwrights
- 21st-century Canadian male writers
- 21st-century Canadian LGBTQ people
- Canadian male dramatists and playwrights
- Film directors from Toronto
- Canadian male stage actors
- Canadian LGBTQ dramatists and playwrights
- Canadian queer writers
- Toronto Metropolitan University alumni
- 21st-century British LGBTQ people
- Canadian LGBTQ film directors