Featured BiographyImage source: StarsUnfolded
Quick Info
Date of birth1983
Age40
BirthplaceLahore, Pakistan
ProfessionArtist
NationalityAmerican
Marital statusUnmarried
FamilyTwo younger siblings; parents (father: businessman; mother: homemaker)
Salman Toor Biography
Pakistani-born painter Salman Toor explores queer experience, race, and contemporary life through intimate figurative work. Trained in the United States,To
Early life and backgroundSalman Toor was born in Lahore, Pakistan in 1983 and spent his formative years there. He attended Aitchison College in Lahore before moving to the United States for higher education. Toor completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing with honors at Ohio Wesleyan University in 2006, and went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 2009. He became an American citizen in 2019.
Career
Toor is a figurative painter whose work repeatedly returns to themes of queerness, the experience of brown men, immigration and questions of belonging in urban life. His paintings often depict slender, ungroomed male figures in familiar domestic and social interiors. These scenes examine intimacy, desire and the everyday realities of a changing social landscape while also referencing art-historical traditions.
Color and atmosphere play a defining role in his practice. Toor frequently uses saturated palettes and has a recurring fondness for green tones, which he deploys to suggest nocturnal light, a sense of glamour, and an uneasy mixture of attraction and toxicity. Over time his works have moved across subjects that include queer culture, post-colonial concerns and reflections on how technology shapes contemporary experience.
Toor’s career advanced through a steady series of exhibitions internationally. Early solo shows included presentations in Lahore and Karachi and gallery exhibitions in New York and elsewhere. Notable solo exhibitions from later years include "How Will I Know" at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2020–2021) and a multi-venue presentation titled "Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love" that traveled to institutions such as the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Tampa Museum of Art, the Honolulu Museum of Art and the Rose Art Museum between 2022 and 2024. Other recent solo presentations were held at M WOODS in Beijing, the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth, and a Hayward Gallery Billboard project in London.
Toor’s work has also been included widely in group shows and biennials. He has participated in exhibitions at major venues such as Tate Modern, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the RISD Museum, the Frick Madison and the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, among many others. His paintings have entered auction sales and museum collections, and several high-profile auction results helped raise his public profile in 2020 and 2021.
Public profile
Critical attention to Toor’s work often focuses on the intimacy of his subjects and the way his paintings bridge personal narrative with broader social themes. He is associated with a cohort of contemporary queer painters sometimes described as "New Queer Intimists," alongside peers working in small-scale, figurative modes.
In addition to painting, Toor has produced illustrations for literary projects, including work made in 2021 for the book Jungle Nama by Amitav Ghosh. Curators and commentators have noted his engagement with older European painting traditions—Baroque, Neoclassical and Rococo—alongside references to modern visual culture.
Personal life
Toor is unmarried and identifies as gay. He comes from a family in Lahore and has two younger siblings. His parents are described as a businessman father and a homemaker mother. He retains ties to his hometown even as his professional life has been centered in the United States.
Latest updates
Recent years have seen Toor mounting museum-scale presentations and taking part in international survey exhibitions. Major solo projects in 2022–2024 brought his work to multiple museums across the United States, Asia and Australia, while group exhibitions continued to place his paintings in dialogue with global conversations about portraiture, diaspora and queer histories.
Career highlights include the 2020–2021 Whitney Museum solo exhibition "How Will I Know," a series of traveling solo shows under the title "No Ordinary Love," and continued inclusion in prominent international group exhibitions and biennials.
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Recent Work
Solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art
2020-2021Traveling museum presentation at Baltimore Museum of Art; Tampa Museum of Art; Honolulu Museum of Art; Rose Art Museum
2022-2024Solo exhibitions at M WOODS, Beijing and The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
2022-2023Hayward Gallery Billboard project at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
2021-2022Career Highlights
- Whitney Museum solo exhibition "How Will I Know" (2020–2021)
- Traveling solo exhibition "Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love" (2022–2024)
- Awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant (2019)
- Included in major international group exhibitions and biennials, including Tate Modern and Kochi-Muziris Biennale
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Frequently Asked Questions
When was Salman Toor born?
Salman Toor was born on 1983.
What is Salman Toor known for?
Salman Toor is known for artist.
What is Salman Toor’s marital status?
Salman Toor's marital status is listed as Unmarried.
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