Negotiating Queer Visibility in Art (1953-Now):

A Trans Perspective upon the Narratives of the Body Within the Artworks of Francis Bacon, Laura Aguilar and Asger Carlsen

Negotiating Queer Visibility in Art (2026) is Ace Cresswell’s dissertation essay that explores narratives of the body within queer art and how different time periods and contexts have affected the conditions surrounding queer visibility, along with the changing requirements for the social progression of LGBTQ+ movements. He explores queer theory and how tactics of queer visibility from the past can be repurposed by transgender contemporary artists in the current day, using the trans body in contemporary art as a site of resistance and empowerment. This essay partially functions as the research and theoretical background behind Ace Cresswell’s artistic practice whilst providing insight into the complexities of queer and trans visibility within art history and contemporary art.

“Throughout this essay, I will use three examples of artists from different time periods to demonstrate how the changing socio-political contexts have required various tactics of visibility, and how these artworks employ the body as a site of resistance and empowerment. In Chapter I, I will first conduct a literature review to provide the foundational framework of queer theory and articulate the methodology through which the artworks and artists will be analysed. Chapter II focuses on Francis Bacon and his piece Two Figures (1953) [Figure 1], where he embeds queer imagery within the materiality of the paint to describe the physicality of queer intimacy rather than explicitly depicting it, allowing him to evade legibility and consequently, persecution. In Chapter III, I explore the use of radical visibility within Laura Aguilar’s photography, concentrated on representation and self-acceptance, in conjunction with the way she transforms her body into both subject and object to subvert societal norms. Finally, in Chapter IV, I examine Asger Carlsen’s artwork to exemplify how the grotesque and the aesthetics of bodily excess can be affirmative for contemporary transgender artists, employing the body as a site of refusal that can help defy systems that seek to define and regulate such bodies.” (Page 4+5)