Bio

Brandon Baghaee is an Afro-Caribbean and Persian artist (b.2002) based in the GTA, holding a BFA from OCAD University. His work has been exhibited in group and solo shows, including The Drake Hotel, and commissioned by institutions such as Scotiabank Arena and Sports and the Arts, the City of Toronto, STEPS Public Art, and the Richmond Hill Public Library and CBC Toronto. He has received the Ontario Arts Council Visual Artists Creation Projects Grant and recently illustrated a children’s book exploring themes of childhood and sports. He is currently an Artist in Residence at the Nia Centre for the Arts.

Artist Statement

My art practice centres on hyper-realistic, surreal oil paintings that merge personal memory with the fantastical. I employ the self, often multiplied or hybridized, to navigate cultural inheritance, belonging, and diasporic identity. My work is a negotiation of personal and historical archives, positioning everyday objects and artifacts as sites of cultural transmission. Influenced by medieval and renaissance art, iconography, and the aesthetics of nostalgia, my paintings function as spaces of both personal reflection and broader cultural synthesis.

Rooted in Afro-Caribbean and Persian traditions, my work explores the ways in which cultural memory is preserved, fragmented, and reconstituted in the diaspora. I investigate how aesthetic and spiritual legacies inform contemporary identity, constructing visual narratives that intertwine familial history with broader discourses on hybridity and belonging. Through richly layered compositions and dynamic visual effects, my paintings challenge fixed notions of selfhood, instead proposing identity as a fluid, ever-evolving entity shaped by lineage, displacement, and imagination.

My work ultimately seeks to create spaces of belonging, both personal and collective, honouring the complexities of identity, ancestry, and the rituals that shape our sense of home.