Oil on canvas

100.6×101 cm. 39 5/8×39 3/4 in.

EXHIBITED
17 – 26 Oct 2017, Short Stories: Salman Toor, Canvas Gallery,
Karachi

PROVENANCE
Canvas Gallery, Karachi
Acquired directly by original collector from the above in 2017
29 Jun 2021, Sotheby's London Spring Auction, Lot 104
Acquired directly by present important private Asian collector
from the above

Cultural Dialogue Across Parallel Realities
Salman Toor's Visual Codes Through History

"I think of the pictures as short stories where the emphasis falls on unexpected places, seemingly mundane situations become illuminating or interesting ones. It's a way of dealing in clichés and daring to do them well."
——Salman Toor

From late 2020 to early 2021, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York hosted Salman Toor's solo exhibition How Will I Know, earning widespread acclaim. Born in Pakistan in 1983, Toor was named one of TIME 100 Next in 2021, recognising him as a rising star shaping the future of contemporary art. His global influence continues to grow, with recent solo exhibitions such as No Ordinary Love touring four U.S. cities and a showcase at Beijing's M Woods Museum. His works are now in the permanent collections of institutions like Tate Modern, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Born into a middle-class family in Lahore, Pakistan, Toor moved to the U.S. in 2002 to study. Frequent visits to the Metropolitan Museum exposed him to Rococo, Baroque, and Neoclassical aesthetics, while his Muslim upbringing instilled a deep sensitivity to the human and divine. In Untitled created in 2017, through his allegorical imagery, Toor traverses the annals of art history, intertwining religion and society, narrating the identity of an era. In addition, he explores his own experiences as a South Asian man and creates an imaginative new world for the 21st century.

Contradictory Metaphors, Cultural Hybridity:
Deconstructing Faith Codes

Toor's unique immigrant identity and artistic background infuse his work with a cross-cultural, timeless allure. He often uses modern, everyday scenes to dismantle Western stereotypes of South Asia, showcasing the hybridity of contemporary society. Untitled exemplifies this through visual contradictions.

At the centre of the painting, a fashionable man dressed in a traditional kurta laughs while wiping the corner of his eye. His vibrant orange and green attire, paired with Western leather shoes, breaks away from the more common white garments associated with Muslims, exuding a modern sense of style. On the right, a boy in tight jeans leans against a tree, symbolising the fusion of religious and modern identities. In the foreground, a barefoot youth in traditional garb slaughters a goat, with a small knife, a metal tray, and a burlap sack for dividing the meat laid out on the ground. To the left, a group of adults chat, one of whom, a heavyset man, holds a phone in his left hand as if discussing business. In the distance, a modern car symbolises the fast-paced mobility of contemporary society. All these elements point to the backdrop of the painting: the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha, the "Festival of Sacrifice."

Eid al-Adha is one of the most significant Islamic holidays, commemorating Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God. As Abraham raised his knife, an angel appeared, providing a ram as a substitute and declaring the sacrifice fulfilled. This story, found in the Quran, is also echoed in the Bible as the Binding of Isaac. During his studies in the U.S., Toor, an admirer of Baroque painting, would have encountered masterpieces by Caravaggio and Rembrandt on this theme. He infuses his work with the dramatic tension of classical art, blending modern perspectives with tradition to offer a unique interpretation. In the painting, a boy leaning against a tree resembles an angel, quietly observing the youth sacrificing a goat. The bald father, akin to the elderly Abraham, stands nearby, not as the conflicted Christian patriarch or the persuasive Islamic elder, but as a man on the phone, watching with quiet pride as his son performs the sacred ritual. Toor deconstructs this generational Islamic tradition, rich with symbols of faith, unfolding it vividly before the viewer's eyes.

Dual-Era Realism: A Meeting of Past and Present

Interestingly, the only figure in the painting that gazes directly at the viewer is the goat at the bottom. Like a Christ-like presence, its stare breaks the fourth wall, connecting the world within the painting to the world outside. This draws parallels to Dutch Renaissance still lifes and market scenes. Much like Pieter Aertsen's The Fat Kitchen: An Allegory, where a hanging piece of meat divides the composition, Toor uses the suspended goat and vivid colour contrasts to separate generational spaces and juxtapose past and present, echoing the contemporary fascination with "parallel realities." A beam of light between ochre and azure divides dawn from dusk, symbolising the seaming of time. On the left, adults chat, immersed in mundane modern life, while on the right, a youth performs the sacred act of slaughter with the devotion of a pilgrim, guided by the tree from the past. The father, Abraham, now on the phone, steps into modernity. Day and night, history and present, son and father—all form a fascinating interplay. Toor empowers Islamic men to merge the secular and sacred, crafting a profound narrative of contemporary existence.

Price estimate:
HKD 2,500,000 – 3,500,000
USD 320,500 – 448,700