Brett Cook is an interdisciplinary artist and educator who uses storytelling to distill complex ideas and creative practices to transform outer and inner worlds of being. Using inquiry-based approaches, Cook designs inclusive processes and products that promote awareness and embody the complexity of loving communities. His public projects feature elaborate installations, community workshops, arts-integrated pedagogy, music, performance, food, and more to create fluid boundaries between art-making, daily life, and healing. Teaching and public speaking are extensions of his social practice that involve communities in dialogue to generate experiences of reflection and insight.

Cook has received numerous awards including the Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professorship at Duke University and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and the Richard C. Diebenkorn Fellowship at the San Francisco Art Institute. Recognized for a history of socially relevant, community-engaged projects, he was selected as cultural ambassador to Nigeria as part of the US Department of State's smARTpower Initiative. His work is in the collection of the Smithsonian/National Portrait Gallery, Walker Art Center, and the Studio Museum of Harlem. He is currently the inaugural Senior Fellow of Visual Arts at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Artist-in-Residence at the Exploratorium, and a trustee of A Blade of Grass.