We are an artist duo working at the crossroads of visual art and literature. We make artists' books, installations and performances, and see them as vessels, depositories for narratives, comprised of textual and physical elements.
We both grew up at the borders – of cultures, countries, languages. The fascination with liminal states and spaces translates into our central themes: trauma and healing, violence and communication, isolation and unity.
In keeping with our backgrounds in linguistics and architecture, we see our creative process as world-building. Through the medium of language, its rigid grammar and syntax, Dinara explores realms of the human unconscious, while Christos moves in the opposite direction: from charcoal lines and watercolor shapes on paper to structured and sculptured narrative.
The in-between is our meeting point.
Contact
dinara@morley.house
christos@morley.house
@morley.house
Dinara Asadulina is a writer and an educator, exploring what it is to be human and to learn. She received a BA (Hons) in Linguistics from Saint Petersburg State University. She completed an MPhil in Education from the University of Cambridge as a Chevening and Cambridge Trust scholar, and studied Creative Writing at Pratt Institute. Since 2012 Dinara has been a co-founder and director of Plombir School, an independent progressive school in St.Petersburg, where many students come from marginalised communities. The school is focused on nurturing creativity and social, emotional, and ethical skills through art (visual, performative and literary). As an artist, Dinara sees a page as an open space and works in multidisciplinary writing, verse fiction, poetry and installation.
Christos Kakourous is an artist and an architect. He received an MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design from the University of Cambridge and graduated with first-class honours in his BA at the University of Westminster, where his design work received several awards, including the RIBA Journal’s Eye Line Drawing Competition. Before Morley House, his research and architecture were focused on urban resilience and new forms of agency. He worked on the public courtyard and gallery at V&A Museum in London, MAAT Museum in Lisbon, and Maggie’s Center in Southampton. Christos is an artist research fellow at the Henry Moore Institute. In 2023 he became one of the 6 recipients of NEON Scholarship that supports emerging artists.