Painting South Asian Queer Men: Meet Pakistani Artist Salman Toor

Either part of a group or isolated, the figures seem vulnerable, fragile and lonely, as if belonging to a faint memory. ⁠Salman uses art history codes to disrupt the Western Orientalist tradition. His paintings are reminiscent of social gatherings depicted by Impressionist masters, despite the XXI-century cellphones and laptop.
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As Toor himself says: ‘I paint figures to enhance my context as a queer man living between cultures. I use figurative imagery to mythologize my life, define my relationship to power, but also to laugh at myself and have fun’. His first solo exhibition, ‘How Will I Know’, ended in April 2021 at the Whitney Museum of American Art.