Pakistani American artist Salman Toor has gained international recognition for paintings placing queer South Asian men at the centre of scenes involving intimacy, nightlife, migration and vulnerability. His first solo European exhibition, *Someone Like You*, opens at London’s Courtauld Gallery, where his figures and themes challenge the demonisation and erasure of brown queer people while engaging with European art history and contemporary politics.

Toor, 43, draws on artists including Manet, Rubens and Van Dyck, as well as Mughal miniatures, while depicting experiences shaped by his Pakistani Muslim upbringing, migration to the US and coming out. His 2019 painting *The Bar on East 13th* reimagines Manet’s *A Bar at the Folies-Bergère* in New York’s queer East Village; his work has appeared in major museum exhibitions, and *Four Friends* sold for $1.2m at Sotheby’s in 2022.