Howard Davis

HAUI™ (Howard J. Davis) (he/they) is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist creating cross-disciplinary work for stage, screen, and visual arts. His work “defies categorization, much like the artist at its centre” (STIR Magazine), synthesizing hybrid forms shaped by myth, memory, and music to explore identity, race, gender, and queerness, while shedding light on overlooked and erased histories. Over the past decade, HAUI has developed a body of work that bridges art and activism through film, theatre, opera, dance, and visual installation. His feature film Mixed↑ (MixedUp) was described as a work that is “going to allow a lot of people to begin healing” (ETalk Canada). His immersive, site-specific dance installation Private Flowers—commissioned by Toronto History Museums and devised through the National Ballet of Canada’s Open Space residency—was praised for “bringing forgotten history to life” (Toronto Star). His recent audiovisual work Aunt Harriet: An Ontario Oratorio, a moving portrait and elegy, “gives Aunt Harriet her voice back” (CBC Arts), restoring dignity to Black rural Canadian history. At the Canadian Opera Company, HAUI became the youngest stage director in the company’s history. He authored the libretto and co-composed Aportia Chryptych: A Black Opera for Portia White in collaboration with Sean Mayes, who also conducted the premiere. The Dora Award–winning opera was hailed as “a rare world premiere from the Canadian Opera Company” (The Globe and Mail) and praised as “an exciting testament to the wealth of innovative creativity in contemporary opera” (Opera Canada). Centering the life and legacy of Portia White—Canada’s first internationally acclaimed singer of African Nova Scotian heritage—the work foregrounded Black Canadian history through a multidisciplinary operatic form. Originally trained in performance, HAUI is a former company member of the Shaw Festival and has been published by Playwrights Canada Press. He is an alumni artist-in-residence at The Watermill Center in New York and has served as artist-in-residence for Wildseed Centre, the City of Toronto, and the City of Guelph. A recipient of the Chalmers Arts Fellowship, he continues to develop new interdisciplinary projects internationally. HAUI’s work continues to challenge the boundaries of traditional media, amplifying underrepresented histories, myths, and perspectives.