Musiccosmos

Framed Text by Huzan Tata Salman Toor Armed with a master’s in fine arts from NYC’s Pratt Institute, this 35-year-old straddles two continents with his art, and considers it an achievement that he’s made “this dual life in New York City and Lahore” work for him. Inspired by pop culture from both the Subcontinent and the Western world, Salman Toor enjoys painting “stories in picture-book style”, usually working with oil paints on canvas or wooden panels, and looks to represent South Asians who, like him, are living a life that’s in between cultures. The pigeonholing of artists from South Asia being his greatest challenge, Toor hopes to portray both the ordinary and the unusual that’s associated with his homeland in his works. Creative Beginnings “I started drawing when I was very young, and found it to be the most exquisite escape and means of invention. I represent stories of brown people living between two cultures, created using an illustrative — sometimes abstract — st...