Brett Cook 'Embodying Liberation: A Dialogue on Community and Healing'

Diverse social and political initiatives were rallying points for Berkeley's free speech/civil rights movement fifty years ago. Today, the work of pioneering methods for working in diverse communities continues. Brett Cook will share extraordinary examples of socially engaged education including his current Reflections of Healing/Life is Living/Oakland Museum of California projects. Participants in this dialogue will model inherently revolutionary ideas about what the practice of art can be, its societal benefits, and how it can be a force for intellectual discovery and social change. Through the exploration of progressive educational philosophies, liberation pedagogy, and contemplative exercises participants will reflect upon their own identity within artworks and community celebrations that express a variety of social and aesthetic positions.

Cook is an artist and educator, who uses his creative practice and to transform outer and inner worlds of being. His museum work features multimedia installations that make intimately personal experiences universally accessible. His public projects typically involve community workshops featuring arts-integrated pedagogy and performance to create a fluid boundary between art making, daily life, and healing. He has received numerous awards, including the Lehman Brady Visiting Professorship at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Richard C. Diebenkorn Fellowship at the San Francisco Art Institute. In 2009, he published Who Am I In This Picture: Amherst College Portraits with Wendy Ewald. Cook was selected as cultural ambassador to Nigeria as part of the U.S. Department of State's 2012 smARTpower Initiative. His work is in private and public collections including the Smithsonian/National Portrait Gallery, the Walker Art Center, and Harvard University. He is a 2014 A Blade of Grass Fellow for Socially Engaged Art.