by Ashley Parry
It’s February once again and that means that, here in the UK, it’s time to celebrate LGBTQ+ History Month, and this year’s specific theme is ‘Science and Innovation’. At first this might not seem like the most relevant theme for an Art and Archaeology Library, but there is in fact a fascinating array of books that blend art, archaeology, and science ready to be explored by intrepid readers!
For example, the recently acquired exhibition catalogue Scientia Sexualis is perfect for this topic, as its approach to combining sexuality, gender and science in art is inclusive and broad-ranging, addressing ‘disciplines that regulate difference, from sexology and anthropology to psychiatry and psychoanalysis, gynaecology and medicine.’1 The artists featured approach these subjects in a variety of ways, from Andrea Carlson’s work challenging the settler-colonial mindset2 to Geo Wyex whose current Muck Studies Dept. performances combine music, sociology, and ecology to ‘turn to the funk, the “gunkalicious” data that nobody wants.’3

I would also like to particularly highlight another artist – Jes Fan – who is featured in Scientia Sexualis as well as three other books in the display (Sex Ecologies, Artists & the Unknown: Art21 Interviews with Artists, and Il Latte dei Sogni: Biennale Arte 2022). Their sculptures and installations explore states of transition – in materials, in bodies, and in minds – often with a biological element. Perhaps, most arrestingly, Fan often incorporates biological ingredients, such as oestrogen, testosterone, and melanin into their sculptures and installations, and, defamiliarizes these heavily politicised substances. As they describe it ‘The critical part is to witness this product in a tube and see how abstract the literal is.’4 In doing so they bring in the perspectives they have gained through both their gender transition and their geographical transitions between Hong Kong, China and the US.


The photographer Elle Pérez – also featured in Il Latte dei Sogni – similarly includes medical-adjacent features in their work, such as blood and scars, but juxtaposes them with scenes from the everyday lives of queer subjects. Through this they intend to evoke love, familiarity, and intimacy, while inviting the viewer to take part in the scene. At the same time, they are very aware of the ways that medical images and images of bodies more broadly have been used in the past – ‘for the pseudo-scientific purpose of documenting deformity’ or ‘for the purpose of subjugating people’ – and aim to ‘trouble and flirt with that complicated history.’5
Another complicated scientific subject that is often explored in the context of queerness is ecology. This relationship between the two is directly addressed in Sex Ecologies, which Like a Little Dog: Andy Warhol’s Queer Ecologies –in which one of the most well-known gay artists of all time is explored from a surprising angle – and in Sister Arts: The Erotics of Lesbian Landscapes, which explores the work of sapphic artists, writers, botanists and naturalists through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.


This engagement with the natural world is also present in the work of the painters Gluck and Hilma af Klint. While both are known for their floral paintings, their approaches to art and life can be far more easily contrasted than compared. While Gluck’s many relationships with women, preference for masculine clothes, and their eschewing of all titles (“No prefix, suffix, or quotes”6) are well-documented, Hilma af Klint’s relationship to queerness is more enigmatic. As Natalie Adler writing for Paper Magazine glibly describes it, ‘We only have the usual signs to go by: never married, lived only with women, enjoyed intimate lifelong friendships with women, communed with other astral planes only with women.7‘ However, Adler also posits that af Klint’s work has a lot to offer in terms of queer interpretation, and the argument of the book Hilma af Klint: A Pioneer of Extraction that af Klint’s work prefigured and should be seen in a tradition with other abstract artists make her a great fit for this theme.

Finally, no blog post looking at queer pioneers in art and archaeology would be complete without paying tribute to Johann Joachim Winckelmann – one of the founders of art history as a discipline. While his work is not flawless (for example, he was one critic who argued against presence of polychromy in Classical Greek sculpture8), his influence is undeniable. One of his innovations is represented in the display by Winckelmann and the Vatican’s First Profane Museum, which tells the story of how Winckelmann’s work helped to transform the consensus view of classical sculpture – from ‘profane’ and ‘pagan’ to ‘beautiful’ and ‘artistic’.
I really wish that I could write about this subject more, but unfortunately there’s just not enough space! All I can do is encourage you to look into this topic in the Bodleian collections for yourself, and a good place to start might be the bibliography below, because I wasn’t even able to fit a mention for all of the books on display into this post! Happy reading and I hope you make some discoveries and create some innovations of your own!
Bibliography
N. Adler, ‘Hilma af Klint’s Queer Clairvoyance’, Paper, https://www.papermag.com/hilma-af-klint-guggenheim#rebelltitem3 (accessed 3 February 2026)
M. Alvarez and C. Villaseñor Black (eds.), Renaissance Futurities: Science, Art, Invention, Oakland CA, University of California Press, 2020.
N. Asma, Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love, New York NY, Gregory R. Miller & Company, 2022.
S. Boehringer, Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome, trans. A. Preger, London, Routledge, 2021.
J. Burton, E. A. Stanley and Tourmaline (eds.), Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility, Cambridge MA, The MIT Press, 2017.
H. Chaosheng and X. Pan (eds.), Spectrosynthesis: Asian LGBTQ Issues and Art Now, Taibei Shi, Cai tuan fa ren Taibei Shi wen hua ji jin hui tai bei dang dai yi shu guan, 2017.
C. O. Chavoya and D. E. Frantz (eds.), Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art, Los Angeles CA, Inventory Press, 2024.
N. Collymore, ‘Fearless Bodies and Identities in Elle Pérez’ Photography’, Contemporary And, https://contemporaryand.com/en/america-latina-magazine/texts/elle-perez-photography (accessed 3 February 2026)
W. Cortjaens, Winckelmann – das göttliche Geschlecht : Auswahlkatalog zur Ausstellung im Schwulen Museum* Berlin, 16. Juni bis 9. Oktober 2017, Petersburg, Michael Imhof Verlag, 2017.
A. De La Haye and M. Pel (eds.), Gluck: Art and Identity, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2017.
T. A. Dowson (ed.), World Archaeology, Oct. 2000, Vol. 32 (2): Queer Archaeologies.
J. Doyle, ‘Geo Wyex’, in J. Doyle and J. Vaccaro (eds.), Scientia Sexualis, Los Angeles CA, Institute of Contemporary Art, Inventory Press, 2024, p.62.
J. Doyle and J. Vaccaro (eds.), Scientia Sexualis, Los Angeles CA, Institute of Contemporary Art, Inventory Press, 2024.
P. DuBois, Sappho is Burning, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Flaunt, ‘Elle Pérez’, Flaunt, https://www.flaunt.com/blog/elle-perez (accessed 3 February 2026)
D. E. Frantz, C. Linden, and C. E. Vargas, Trans hirstory in 99 objects, Pasadena CA, Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art, 2024.
A. Gayed, Queer World Making: Contemporary Middle Eastern Diasporic Art, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2024.
D. Getsy, Abstract Bodies: Sixties Sculpture in the Expanded Field of Gender, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2023.
K. Gilhuly, Erotic Geographies in Ancient Greek Literature and Culture, Abingdon, Routledge, 2020.
Gluck, The Dilemma of the Painter and Conservator in the Synthetic Age: A Paper Read at the Museums Association Conference at Edinburgh, 21st July, 1954, London, Headley Brothers, 1954.
C. Graves-Brown, Sex and Gender in Ancient Egypt : ‘Don Your Wig for a Joyful Hour’, Swansea, Classical Press of Wales, 2008.
A. E. Grudin, Like a Little Dog: Andy Warhol’s Queer Ecologies, Oakland CA, University of California Press, 2022.
K. Harloe, Winckelmann and the Invention of Antiquity: History and Aesthetics in the Age of Altertumswissenschaft, New York, Oxford University Press, 2013.
S. Hessler, Sex Ecologies, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2021.
F. Leoni and M. Natif (eds.), Eros and Sexuality in Islamic art, Farnham, Ashgate, 2013.
J. Lewis, Artists & the Unknown: Art21 Interviews with Artists, New York, Art21, 2024.
L. L. Moore, Sister arts: The Erotics of Lesbian Landscapes, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2011.
I. Müller-Westermann and J. Widoff (eds.), Hilma af Klint: A Pioneer of Abstraction, Ostfildern, Hatje Cantz, 2013.
S. Nooter, How to be Queer: An Ancient Guide to Sexuality; Sappho, Plato, and Other Lovers, trans. S. Nooter, Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 2024.
L. Pham, ‘At MoMA PS1, Photographer Elle Pérez Finds Depth in the Everyday’, The Village Voice, https://web.archive.org/web/20180824203540/https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/08/24/at-moma-ps1-photographer-elle-perez-finds-depth-in-the-everyday/ (accessed 3 February 2026).
B. Redondo, ‘Jes Fan unpacks the material of identity’, J. Lewis (ed.), in Artists & the Unknown: Art21 Interviews with Artists, New York, Art21, 2024, pp.110-117.
B. Rodríguez Muñoz (ed.) Health, London, Whitechapel Press, 2020.
L. A. Ruprecht Jr., Winckelmann and the Vatican’s first Profane Museum, New York NY, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
A. Sroka, in J. Doyle and J. Vaccaro (eds.), Scientia Sexualis, Los Angeles CA, Institute of Contemporary Art, Inventory Press, 2024.
M. Talbot, ‘Color Blind’, The New Yorker, vol. XCIV; no. 34, October 29 2018, p.44.
I. Wallace, ‘Elle Perez’, in M. Hanson (ed.), Il Latte dei Sogni: Biennale Arte 2022: Volume 1, Venice, La Biennale di Venezia, 2022, pp.286-289
M. Walley, Incorporating Nonbinary Gender into Inuit Archaeology: Oral Testimony and Material Inroads, Abingdon, Routledge, 2021.
M. Weisburg, ‘Jes Fan’, in M. Hanson (ed.), Il Latte dei Sogni: Biennale Arte 2022: Volume 1, Venice, La Biennale di Venezia, 2022, pp.630-633
G. Wyex, ‘Geo Wyex | Music’, Bandcamp, https://geowyex.bandcamp.com/ (accessed 17 February 2026).
- J. Doyle and J. Vaccaro, ‘Introduction’, in J. Doyle and J. Vaccaro (eds.), Scientia Sexualis, Los Angeles CA, Institute of Contemporary Art, Inventory Press, 2024, p.11. ↩︎
- A. Sroka, in J. Doyle and J. Vaccaro (eds.), Scientia Sexualis, Los Angeles CA, Institute of Contemporary Art, Inventory Press, 2024, p.139 ↩︎
- J. Doyle, ‘Geo Wyex’, in J. Doyle and J. Vaccaro (eds.), Scientia Sexualis, Los Angeles CA, Institute of Contemporary Art, Inventory Press, 2024, p.62. ↩︎
- [1] B. Redondo, ‘Jes Fan unpacks the material of identity’, in J. Lewis (ed.), Artists & the Unknown: Art21 Interviews with Artists, New York, Art21, 2024, p.116. ↩︎
- [1] N. Collymore, ‘Fearless Bodies and Identities in Elle Pérez’ Photography’, Contemporary And, https://contemporaryand.com/en/america-latina-magazine/texts/elle-perez-photography (accessed 3 February 2026) ↩︎
- M. Michalska, ‘Gluck – No Prefix, No Suffix Queer Artist’, DailyArt Magazine, https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/gluck-and-her-queer-art/ (Acessed 6 February 2026) ↩︎
- N. Adler, ‘Hilma af Klint’s Queer Clairvoyance’, Paper, https://www.papermag.com/hilma-af-klint-guggenheim#rebelltitem3 (accessed 3 February 2026) ↩︎
- M. Talbot, ‘Color Blind’, The New Yorker, vol. XCIV; no. 34, October 29 2018, p.44. ↩︎



















































































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