SALMAN TOOR

Early Years

Salman Toor was born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1983. He grew up immersed in a culture rich with literary, artistic, and religious history, which would later serve as both inspiration and foil in his work. Toor studied painting and drawing at Ohio Wesleyan University in the United States before completing his MFA in painting at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where he continues to live and work.

Toor's personal experience as a queer South Asian immigrant navigating Western and South Asian cultural paradigms informs the emotional tenor and visual complexity of his art. His paintings often feature young men—avatars of the artist himself—negotiating private desires and public scrutiny across hybrid, imagined worlds.

Artworks

Salman Toor's practice fuses old master painting with contemporary art narratives to reframe the representation of queer, brown, and diasporic identities. His artworks explore the emotional, cultural, and psychological landscapes of his subjects through lush figuration and theatrical composition. Drawing from both art history and everyday life, Toor creates poignant scenes that feel at once personal and universal, placing marginalised experiences at the centre of contemporary painting.

Early Figuration and Influence

Toor's early figurative paintings reflect his deep engagement with Western art history, particularly Baroque and Rococo aesthetics. By adopting the visual language of European masters like Caravaggio, Watteau, and Van Dyck, the artist constructs a dialogue between colonial pasts and queer present-day realities. His use of chiaroscuro, ornate drapery, and theatrical lighting imbues these contemporary figures with historical gravitas. These artworks—often set in modest apartments or imagined salons—reinterpret classical tropes to centre queer brown bodies in intimate and emotionally charged narratives.

Materials and Murals

While Salman Toor is celebrated for his lush oil paintings, his practice extends into drawing, sculpture, and mural-making, each medium deepening the emotional complexity of his work. His oil paintings, with their soft, layered brushwork and luminous palette, recall the atmosphere of old master canvases while centring queer and diasporic bodies. The artist also uses oil pastel, particularly in his works on paper, to sketch spontaneous scenes with immediacy and intimacy. These smaller drawings often serve as studies for larger paintings, but they stand on their own for their raw texture and psychological depth.

In recent years, Toor has expanded into sculpture, exploring three-dimensional form as a way to extend his narratives into space. His figurative sculptures echo the vulnerability and theatricality found in his painted characters, with textured surfaces that retain a handmade, expressive quality. Toor's murals, often created for institutional contexts, similarly magnify the introspective tone of his easel paintings, enveloping viewers in emotionally charged scenes that unfold across expansive walls. Across media, Toor's contemporary artworks maintain a tactile, painterly sensibility, underscoring the intimate, human focus of his practice.

International Recognition

Salman Toor gained international recognition with How Will I Know at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2020, a breakthrough exhibition that introduced his emotionally rich figurative paintings to a wider audience. The gallery presentation solidified Toor's place within the canon of contemporary art, resonating for its sensitivity to themes of vulnerability, identity, and belonging. His subsequent exhibitions in institutions such as the Baltimore Museum of Art and M Woods Museum, Beijing, further established his global presence. These shows highlighted his artworks' ability to transcend geographic and cultural boundaries.

Public Commissions

• Salman Toor: Music Room, Hayward Gallery Billboard, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London (2021–2022)

Awards and Accolades

• Painters and Sculptors Grant, Joan Mitchell Foundation (2019)

Exhibitions

Salman Toor has been the subject of both solo exhibitions and group exhibitions at important institutions. A selection of important exhibitions are provided below.

Solo Exhibitions

• Salman Toor: New Paintings and Drawings, M WOODS, Beijing (2022)
• Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore; Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa; Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham
• How Will I Know, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2020-2021)

Group Exhibitions

• Shifting Landscapes, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2024-2026)
• Queer Histories, MASP Museu de Arte de São Paulo, São Paulo (2024-2025)
• Le monde comme il va/ The World As It Goes, Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris (2024)
• Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, 60th Venice Biennale, Venice (2024)
• Capturing the Moment, Tate Modern, London (2023)
• Based on a True Story, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago (2022)
• I will wear you in my heart of heart, FLAG Art Foundation, New York (2021)

Website and Instagram

Salman Toor's Instagram can be found here.

Critical Reception

Salman Toor's work has been widely featured in major publications including The Financial Times, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. On Salman Toor's practice, Ocula Magazine wrote: Toor evokes the interchangeable feelings of inclusion and exclusion felt by his figures.'

FAQs

Ocula | 2025