Salman Toor

Paintings by Salman Toor

Born in Lahore, Pakistan in 1983, Salman Toor studied painting and drawing at Ohio Wesleyan University, and received his MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, in 2009. His work, usually done with oil paints on canvas or wooden panels, has ranged in style from meticulously executed nineteenth century-styled history painting to loosely painted, abstracted figurative work with design elements from both Eastern and Western pop culture. 

Salman Toor straddles two continents with his art, living a dual life in New York City and Lahore. Inspired by pop culture from both the Subcontinent and the Western world, he enjoys painting scenes that represent South Asians who, like him, are living a life that’s in between cultures. Toor hopes to portray both the ordinary and the unusual that’s associated with his homeland in his works.  

Toor finds inspiration in the history of European paintings, particularly in the Baroque, Romantic and Impressionist artists such as Peter Paul Rubens, Diego Velázquez, and Johannes Vermeer. He has also been inspired by the works of Eastern artists such as Nainsukh, an important practitioner of Pahari miniature painting, and Bichitr, Emperor Jahangir’s court painter who combined Indian landscapes with European perspective.  

Salman Toor’s paintings tell stories of lives lived between two cultures. Using his own experiences, he paints narratives, often mixtures of coziness, leisure and sensuality, dealing with the issues of his figures’ identity, those of brownness and queerness, and those between Western and Eastern culture. Toor examines the vulnerability within today’s public and private life and the sense of community in the world-wide queer identity.

In Toor’s work, multi-ethnic couples dance, embrace in bars, share wine and cigarettes, and experience both reunions and comforting moments. Through his paintings depicting the everyday and special moments of his characters, Toor presents a relatable experience to the viewer. While his works illustrate the hard-won gains made by queer society in social life, they also reveal the tension and anxiety of crossing national and moral boundaries in a world where religious and ethnic identity supplants diversity

Salman Toor currently lives in the East Village and works out of a studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn. He has exhibited at several solo exhibitions, including New Delhi’s Nature Morte Gallery in December 2019, New York’s Marianne Boesky Gallery in January 2020, and New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art in March 2020. Toor has also participated in significant group shows such as the Kochi Biennale in 2016, and the inaugural Lahore Biennale in 2018.

“I’ve been exposed to things in Pakistan that don’t allow me to take these liberties (gained) for granted. Being queer—I accepted it for a very long time, but I never really celebrated it. And I want to celebrate it now.” -Salman Toor, January 2020

Middle Inser Ingae: Salman Toor, “Reading”, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas