‘Brown men are fearless, funny and sexy’: Salman Toor on clubbing, queerness and New York’s Muslim moment

Obsessed with Manet … Toor’s The Bar on East 13th pays tribute to A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. Photograph: Genevieve Hanson/© Salman Toor; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, and Thomas Dane Gallery

In Salman Toor’s paintings, queer south Asian men hang out in bars, twerk at trippy gatherings and lose themselves in phone screens. Sometimes they huddle in the back of taxis or pillow-fight on beds. In one portrait, a brown man stares apprehensively while facing customs officials. For the 43-year-old Pakistani American artist, it’s crucial that these figures take centre stage, after years of being demonised and erased.

“It excites me that the cuteness and sexiness of brown protagonists can become familiar,” says Toor when we meet at his sun-drenched Brooklyn studio, a few weeks before his first solo show in Europe. “Their stories are not a gay side story in a family saga. It’s the main story. And everyone else is in the background.”