Conjured into being by 2019, How to Raise a Ghost is a sprawling, shape-shifting opus—a many-limbed creature of inquiry and creation. This tentacular project weaves together death studies, collaborative and contemplative art-making, ritual, photography, performance, video, and community-driven events. At its heart lies a deep, unflinching gaze into mortality—a contemporary revival of the ancient memento mori: remember, you must die.
Part séance, part salon, part solo reckoning, the work lingers in the liminal, inviting artists and audiences to dwell with difficult, essential questions: When did you first hear of death? What is the shape of your grief? How might the artist shape our collective imagination around dying, grief, and the ghosts we carry? How do you raise a ghost?
How to Raise a Ghost appearances: Young Lungs Dance Exchange (Winnipeg, 2025), Waking Death Arts & Culture Event Series (Casa, Lethbridge, 2023), ART NOW (ULethbridge, 2023), Tidal Art Residency (Lund, 2023), KolajFest (New Orleans, 2022), Canadian Association of Theatre Research (Lethbridge, 2022), Transart (2022), Theatre Outré Salon Series (Lethbridge, 2022, 2019), International Federation of Theatre Research (Ireland, 2021), Happy Phantoms (Winnipeg, 2020), Ayatana Artist Research Program (online, 2020), Morbid Anatomy (online, 2020), Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Lethbridge, 2020).
The Happy Phantoms
Under the shroud of How to Raise a Ghost, Mia collaborated with Winnipeg-based artists Ming Hon, Tanja Woloshen & Natasha Torres Garner, founding The Happy Phantoms Collective (2019); a creative team who probe difficult and provocative themes that haunt the human experience.
In the summer of 2020 – during a global pandemic – the Happy Phantoms explored the theme of < death > by dialogue while they moved to the ancient principles of memento mori as a contemporary art praxis; playing in ritual, performance, photography and video art; these hauntings were marked by each collective member and their personal relationship to death (with generous support from the Manitoba Arts Council)
On July 29, 2020, The Happy Phantoms haunted the streets of Winnipeg’s historic Exchange District, an area usually brimming with festive energy, now a ghost town on this pandemic summer night. We were joined by photographer Karen Asher to capture the rite.
Video: How to Raise a Ghost with The Happy Phantoms (2020)
Directed & Performed by Mia van Leeuwen, Natasha Torres-Garner, Ming Hon & Tanja Woloshen, Video editing by Kayla Jeanson, Location: Winnipeg, Canada, Treaty Territory 1
Video: The Tears of Things (2020) by The Happy Phantoms, Video editing by Kayla Jeanson
Permutations of a Ghost
Ongoing collaborative photography project capturing the spectacular shapes of spectres, spooks, spirits, phantoms, apparitions, ghouls, griefs … what is a ghost anyway?
Spectre and Apparition make a great Noise in the World … Between our Ancestors laying too much stress upon them and the present Age endeavouring wholly to explode and despise them, the World seems hardly ever to have come to a right understanding about them.
‘A. Moreton’ (Daniel Defoe), Secrets of the Invisible World (1783)
Permutations of a Ghost 1. Collaboration with Mandy van Leeuwen, Andrew Rabyniuk, Tara Lynn MacDougall (2020)
Mia Star van Leeuwen 