Dr Murat Adash
Faculties, departments and locations
- Kingston School of Art
- Department of Fine Art
- School of Arts
Lecturer in Fine Art
- Email:
- [email protected]
About
I am an artist and researcher working across performance, expanded choreography, moving image, installation, and writing. Through movement, voice, text, and a spatial practice that interweaves both tangible and intangible materialities — in correspondence with human and more-than-human agents and entities — I explore how bodies relate to one another, to their environments, and to the unseen forces that shape perception.
My practice-based PhD project, Edges of Bodies: Camouflage and the Choreographic Dimensions of Alterity, completed at Goldsmiths, University of London, reconfigured the phenomenon of camouflage as a choreographic and spatial strategy, a way of negotiating presence, visibility, and relation. My current projects continue this trajectory through the long-term performance cycle Correspondance (2019–25) and my forthcoming book Camouflage Consciousness (Mousse Publishing, 2026), which theorises camouflage as an expanded ecological and choreographic tactic.
The Correspondance series (2019–25) has been central to my artistic research. Conceived as a cycle of multimedia choreographic inquiries, it unfolded across large-scale museum exhibitions, moving image works, durational performances, and intimate one-on-one encounters. Each iteration staged camouflage and relation as live experiments, testing how perception, presence, and collectivity could be altered in different spatial and temporal registers. As this cycle draws to a close, my work is shifting toward a new body of research I call choreo-cinema. These works explore what happens when choreographic thinking meets cinematic form: reimagining moving image and expanded cinema through somatic practice, ecological entanglement, and performative experimentation. Choreo-cinema aims to invent hybrid formats in which movement practice and moving image co-compose new sensorial architectures for seeing, sensing, and inhabiting space together.
In my practice, I draw from somatic methods, queer theory, Indigenous cosmologies, ecology, and critical dance studies to stage porous thresholds between bodies and environments. My performances and installations create temporary architectures of relation in which physical and perceptual boundaries can be reconfigured, queered, and reimagined.
Since 2020, I have been Lecturer in Fine Art at Kingston School of Art, where I teach across the BA and MFA programmes.
Qualifications
- 2023, PhD in Art, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
- 2022, Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PGCertHE), UK
- 2014, MFA in Visual Arts, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA
- 2012, Studies in Fine Arts as a Fulbright Scholar, San Francisco Art Institute, USA
- 2011, BA (Hons) in Performance and Visual Arts, University of Brighton, UK
Domains
In my teaching, I approach the classroom as a space of co-creation that values experimentation, critical inquiry, and inclusivity. I encourage students to take creative risks, embrace unexpected outcomes, and develop confidence in their own voices while learning collaboratively with their peers. My pedagogy is informed by intersectional and decolonial perspectives, drawing from queer theory, somatic practice, and global knowledges beyond the Western canon. By combining high expectations with an openness to failure as a mode of growth, I foster learning environments where students can test ideas, expand their methodological toolkits, and situate their practices within wider social and cultural contexts.
Qualifications
- Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PGCertHE)
Courses taught
My research explores choreography as an expanded artistic research methodology. I approach artistic research as a practice that generates new forms of knowledge—embodied, tacit, and situated—emerging not only from artworks themselves but also from the processes, relations, and contexts they activate. Central to my work is the long-term exploration of camouflage as a conceptual and choreographic framework: a way of negotiating visibility, relation, and ecological belonging across human and more-than-human encounters.
Drawing on somatic practice, queer and feminist theory, Indigenous cosmologies, ecology, and critical theory, I develop performance, moving image, installation, and writing projects that test how choreographic strategies can reconfigure perception, presence, and collective experience. Alongside my practice, I co-organize the annual Choreographic Devices symposium at the ICA London, which activates choreography as a methodology for transdisciplinary rehearsal, speculation, and co-research.
Specialisms
- Performance in Contemporary Art
- Expanded Dance & Choreography
- Artistic Research & Methodologies
- Camouflage as Artistic & Choreographic Strategy
- Choreo-Cinema & Moving Image Practices
- Installation & Spatial Practices
- Ecology, Space & Body
- Somatics & Embodied Research
- Queer Theory & Feminist Thought in Artistic Practice
- Indigenous Cosmologies & Decolonial Frameworks
- Art Pedagogy & Education
My professional practice bridges artistic research, performance, and knowledge exchange across international contexts. I completed my fully funded PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London, supported by a CHASE AHRC Doctoral Award. My forthcoming book Camouflage Consciousness (Mousse Publishing, 2026) extends this research by theorising camouflage as a conceptual and choreographic strategy. Since 2020, I have also co-organised the annual symposium Choreographic Devices at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, which activates choreography as a methodology for transdisciplinary research and collaboration.
My performances and exhibitions have been presented at major international venues, including Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (Berlin), the Contemporary Art Centre (Vilnius), Neue Nationalgalerie (Berlin), Somerset House (London), Museum Angewandte Kunst (Frankfurt am Main), The Mosaic Rooms (London), Sakıp Sabancı Museum (Istanbul), and the Manifesta Biennial (Zurich).
I have held numerous residencies and fellowships that have shaped and expanded my practice. These include: the danceWEB Scholarship at ImPulsTanz – Vienna International Dance Festival (AT); Artistic Research Fellowship at the Berlin Artistic Research Programme (DE); artist residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts (US), Kulturakademie Tarabya (TR), Studio Voltaire (UK), Rupert (LT), Delfina Foundation (UK), and the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (DE).
Through these projects, I continue to build platforms that connect artistic practice with broader publics, fostering new dialogues between performance, research, and diverse communities.