RARE ACCESS POINT (exhibition by Cookie Brunel)

From Nov 5th to 15th, visit Cookie Brunel's solo exhibition RARE ACCESS POINT set in TMU's Urban Farm greenhouse. Experience a post-human fantasy world where plants reclaim electronics and digital spaces, as you explore Rare Access Point, three wind-themed sculptures produced by Cookie during thier time as Creative in Residence at the DFZ.

About the Creative in Residence program

The Design Fabrication Zone’s annual Creative in Residence (CiR) program is a 3 month self-directed residency opportunity for ‘making-based creatives’ practising at all stages of their career. The CiR program was established in 2022 with the goal of presenting Toronto-based makers with unconventional programming opportunities that bridge fine arts, craft, and design, with digital fabrication technology. This year, Cookie was invited to reflect on the Urban Farm ecosystem and rooftop greenhouse as a site for creative intervention, looking to this year’s curatorial theme of ‘Wind Rose’ as prompt for investigations on dynamic forces, both natural and otherworldly.

Meet the Artist

Cookie Brunel (they/them) uses sculpture, music, and electronics to criticize bias in Western epistemology. A former archaeologist, Brunel became disillusioned after witnessing how modern discrimination in archaeological interpretation is widely presented as historical fact. Informed by these experiences, Brunel’s artistic practice argues for the importance of intersectional approaches to research that value subjectivity, bodily knowledge, and poetics. Themes that persist through their research include pedagogy, identity, shapeshifting, surveillance, and waveforms. They strive for an anti-capitalist digital art practice, exploring ideas and movements such as de-growth, de-googling, open source, and the right to repair… and they would love to talk to you about it!

Brunel has exhibited and performed internationally as an artist and musician. They have worked professionally in fabrication and art education, in spaces such as Artscape (RIP), OCADU, and the University of Toronto. They hold degrees in Archaeology and Studio Art from the University of Calgary, the Alberta University of the Arts, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.