Salman Toor's First European Institutional Show Opens at Courtauld Gallery

Salman Toor's first institutional exhibition in Europe, titled 'Someone Like You,' is on view at the Courtauld Gallery in London from 2 October to 10 January. The show features almost 40 paintings and drawings spanning from 2019 to the present, including works that explore the concept of the threshold as it relates to queer and migrant experiences. Curated by Elena Crippa, the exhibition highlights Toor's personal and communal experiences of border controls and racial profiling after moving from Lahore to the US in 2002. Key works include 'Man with Face Creams and Phone Plug' (2019), which depicts a brown-skinned man at an airport checkpoint from the perspective of an immigration officer, and 'The Women' (2021), which captures a queer-fem child's experience in gender-segregated South Asian spaces. Recent works introduce 'fag puddles,' surreal assemblages inspired by the Smooze from My Little Pony, which Toor describes as props for code-switching. The exhibition also features a new work, 'Fag Puddle with Carriers' (2026), and references Toor's largest painting yet, 'The Studio' (2026), which cites Diego Velázquez's 'Las Meninas' and was created during the genocide in Gaza. The Courtauld acquired 'Fag Puddle in Vitrine' (2021) in 2024, which indirectly led to the current show. Toor's practice examines themes of belonging, exclusion, and the navigation of multiple identities, with the artist stating that the threshold is a conceptual keystone in his narrative painting.