Adam Nasser Benmakhlouf (they/them) is Lecturer in Fine Art in the University of Edinburgh. They are an active interdisciplinary research working with a focus on contemporary art criticism and expanded usage of writerly methods within research. Their work investigates the impact and possibilities of so-called invisible labour particularly within the art institutional context, and especially in relation to anti-capitalist artistic practice which resists exhibitable formats.
They are currently developing an experimentally shaped monograph based on their Doctoral research (fully funded by the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities, principally supervised by Professor Maria Fusco, with Dr Johanna Linsley and Beth Bates, hosted by Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee), considering workshopping in the contemporary art context, and specifically the role of the artist-facilitator and facilitation as artistic practice.
They have shared their research across prestigious conferences and art institutions at national and international levels, most recently within Manchester Whitworth Gallery, the Yale University’s Paul Mellon Centre for British Art Studies, Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Art, the University of Durham, and the Association for Art History, London. In 2024, they published a new book-length publication on radical approaches to programming artists’ moving image with the renowned LUX film agency, the culmination of research started with them in 2020. During 2022-24, they crafted a complex public programme as an invited artist in Hospitalfield, an international artists’ and writers’ residency centre in Arbroath.
For a decade, they were the foremost contemporary art commentator in Scotland, publishing continuously during 2012-2022 nationally and internationally. Their critical writing consciously amplifies the work of artists of the global majority, and especially practices centring decoloniality.
They also frequently act as an anti-racist advocate both for individuals, and as a consultant for organisations who seek to transform their processes and practices.