Salman Toor: New Paintings and Drawings

Salman Toor: New Paintings and Drawings is the first solo museum exhibition in Asia of Pakistan-born, New York-based artist Salman Toor. The presentation showcases a selection of 27 new paintings and 23 new works on paper, exploring important themes that converge in Toor’s work, from museological allegories and imperialist histories, to his conversation with nature as a space for queer freedom. Toor created an ambitious new body of work for the Beijing exhibition, and the presentation was developed over the last two years through close conversations between the artist and Victor Wang, Artistic Director of M WOODS.

Blurring the line between memoir and fiction, Toor’s work presents a nuanced view of the queer and the immigrant experience, questions of cultural ownership, and the search for self-love and community. Rendered in Toor’s signature figurative style, which both pays homage to and wryly subverts a variety of art historical references, the works are camp, macabre, romantic, and reverential. Probing his own identity – oscillating between Eastern Muslim man and queer brown boy – Toor’s work speaks to the challenge of reconciling multiple selves and the expectations carried by each.

For more information about the exhibition, please visit the M WOODS website.