Portals: The Colours of Our Longing

Portals is a visual and poetic conversation between a writer and an artist, in which images and words reflect on the body and spirit, in all their wonder and mystery.

Portals: The Colours of Our Longing is a visual and poetic dialogue between a painter and a poet/performance artist. Suzi Morris is an artist whose paintings question ideas of the sublime body, most recently through her affiliation with the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London, in response to the new science discipline of genomics. Celeste Nazeli Snowber is a poet, dancer, and multidisciplinary artist whose work, through her writing, teaching, and site-specific performance, explores embodied forms of inquiry. In Portals, lyrical texts sit alongside images that are both delicate and intense, as words and paintings invite the reader to consider how body and spirit can move in harmony together. This collaboration creates something personal and universal, bringing beauty to a troubled world. The two artists - one based in Vancouver, the other in London - unite in a shared vision of sensual ways of being in the world, opening portals to the infinite.

Suzi Morris, PhD, is a visual artist whose work explores the notion of the sublime in contemporary life. Following a scholarship, she completed her Master’s in Fine Art at the City & Guilds of London Art School. Continuing her research through an affiliation with the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London, she enriched her practice and drew inspiration from the emerging field of genomics. Her oil paintings have been written about in leading art publications such as Modern Painters and Aesthetica Magazine, and her concept of ’The Viral Sublime’ is the focus of a limited-edition publication. Celeste Nazeli Snowber, PhD, is a dancer, poet, writer, and award-winning educator who is currently Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Her work focuses on embodied forms of inquiry and the presence of the body in arts-based research. Snowber’s performative work is centered on site-specific performance and one-woman shows that integrate comedy, contemporary dance, and improvisation. She has performed and presented internationally in concert halls, galleries, conferences, and a wide range of outdoor spaces. Her most recent book of poetry, The Marrow of Longing, is an exploration of her Armenian identity.