Brandon Baghaee: In a Friendly Sky
May 7 – August 2, 2026
Lower Hall Gallery
Aurora Town Square – 50 Victoria Street, Aurora
In a Friendly Sky presents a new body of work by Brandon Baghaee created during his winter residency at the Aurora Cultural Centre. Building on his signature surreal, hyperrealist self-portraits, the paintings in this series move beyond the autobiographical to explore questions of diasporic identity, culture, and genealogy. The exhibition is supplemented by a selection of earlier paintings, which provide context for Brandon’s latest work.
In this series, the artist explores his relationship to his Jamaican grandparents through self-portraiture, seamlessly weaving family history with broader cultural and historical references. Tapping into bell hooks’ writings on building Black community through liberatory habits of being, Brandon connects to his grandparents by recreating their daily practices within his paintings.
Although the artist appears alone in his compositions, he invokes his grandparents’ presence through the everyday artifacts that signify their lives and habits. In Daphne, Brandon transforms his grandmother’s hand-sewn wedding dress into a protective suit of armour, representing sewing as a form of resistance for Jamaican women. Similarly, Osmond’s Sounds evokes his music-loving grandfather through the sound system, paying homage to groundbreaking Jamaican audio engineer King Tubby. By tracing the material ties of kinship and culture, Brandon simultaneously visualizes his connection to his grandparents while situating himself within an imagined past.
Rendered with smooth, meticulous brushwork, Brandon’s paintings evoke a soft, dreamlike intimacy that is nonetheless bold and declarative. By collapsing the distinctions between individual and family identity, Brandon articulates a profound identification with his lineage and culture, and a continuity between generations.
This exhibition is on view in Lower Hall Gallery (level 1) from May 7 – August 2, 2026, and opens Thursday May 7 from 6:30-8:30pm in our Spring Halls Soirée. Refreshments provided, and remarks to commence at 7:00pm. All are welcome.
Brandon Baghaee, In a Friendly Sky (installation view), Aurora Cultural Centre, 2026
Scheduled Programming
Spring Halls Soirée | Thursday May 7, from 6:30 – 8:30pm: All are welcome to celebrate the opening of our spring hallway exhibitions. Light refreshments provided with remarks at 7pm.
Crit Club (Ages 18+) | Saturday, May 23, 9:00 – 11:00am: Crit Club offers a free space for artists to gather and engage in thoughtful dialogue surrounding their own and each other’s work.
Spring Artist-Poet Gathering | Saturday, May 23, 11:00am – 1:00pm: A quarterly meetup for artists and poets to create spontaneous written and visual responses to the artworks on display within our current exhibitions.
About the Artist
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 numerous shows and commissioned by institutions such as Scotiabank Arena, Sports and the Arts, the City of Toronto, STEPS Public Art, the Richmond Hill Public Library, and CBC Toronto. Brandon has received an Ontario Arts Council Grant and completed a NIA Centre for the Arts residency. His art practice centres on hyper-realistic, surreal oil paintings merging memory with the fantastical. He employs the self, often hybridized, to navigate cultural inheritance, belonging, and diasporic identity.