Why So Many Hearts? Exploring the Symbol of the Heart in Art and Mental Health

As part of the 2025 Art as a Response to Mental Health online exhibition, a curious and compelling visual pattern has emerged — a striking number of participating artists have turned to the heart as a central motif in their work.

From Antonino’s cracked but glowing heart cradled in hands in Heart Break to Igor Zusev’s pierced anatomical heart in Panc, these artworks span cultures, mediums, and emotional registers — and yet, they all return to this enduring symbol. Why?

What is it about the heart that makes it such a powerful vessel for communicating mental health?

The Heart as a Universal Metaphor

The heart has long stood as a metaphor for the emotional centre of the human experience. While the brain may drive cognition, the heart is where we place grief, love, longing, connection, and pain. It is where we say we feel things — a broken heart, an open heart, a heavy heart, a heart full of hope.

In a mental health context, the heart becomes an intuitive stand-in for vulnerability. It is the part of us that wants to love and be loved, that feels disconnection deeply, and that aches when life becomes unmanageable. It is also the site of courage and healing — a reminder that feeling is not weakness, but strength.

A Visual Thread of Emotion and Symbolism

Across the exhibition, artists have used the heart in diverse and meaningful ways:

• In Whispers of the Heart by ElyX (Spain), a glowing heart releases a soft, ethereal prayer — a visualisation of inner longing and spiritual surrender.

• Disconnection by Carla Alpert (NY) presents a heart offered across a barrier, illustrating how shame and unworthiness block our ability to receive connection.

• Andrea Bradbury’s Eating for Love turns the heart into a meal, exploring the blurred boundaries between nourishment, affection, and emotional hunger.

• In Mental Health Crisis – Self Portrait by Barbara Hulme (Manchester), the heart becomes a cry for help — held in the hands of a woman silenced by trauma and social injustice.

• Panc by Igor Zusev (Florida) translates the chaos of a panic attack into an anatomical heart pierced from all angles — a body under siege.

Each piece is distinct, yet together they form a visual symphony of emotional truth.

Why This Matters

In a time when conversations about mental health are more important than ever, symbols like the heart allow artists and audiences to communicate beyond language. The heart becomes a shared language of feeling — one that is accessible, human, and instantly understood.

The recurrence of the heart across this exhibition also reveals something else: that mental health is not just a clinical condition, but an emotional landscape. It touches our relationships, our identities, our sense of self-worth and belonging. And in this exhibition, the heart is not only breaking — it is reaching, glowing, praying, and surviving.

Art as Healing, Art as Witness

Whether metaphorical or literal, the heart reminds us that to care about mental health is to care about humanity. It affirms that feeling is not a flaw, but a feature of being alive.

The artists of this exhibition — through their depictions of hearts in pain, in isolation, in hope — have gifted us not just artworks, but reminders: to listen more deeply, to look more compassionately, and to feel more fully.

After all, every heartbeat is a story. And every story deserves to be seen.