Why We Need More Exhibitions About Body Image, Eating Disorders, and Mental Health
- artandcakela
- Aug 17
- 5 min read
By Kristine Schomaker Sitting in that room at Garel Fine Art Gallery yesterday, listening to artists share their raw truths about eating disorders and recovery, I kept thinking: why don't we have more exhibitions like this? Why are conversations about mental health, body image, and the real work of healing still so rare in gallery spaces?
"The Other Side: Art, Recovery, and the Human Condition," curated by Robin Jack Sarner, emerged from her personal experience helping her daughter through eating disorder recovery. When institutions suggested that discussing these issues would "give kids ideas," Sarner decided to create the conversation herself. That exhibition proved something powerful: when we center these experiences in art spaces, we create community around healing.
Art as Witness, Art as Healing
During the panel discussion, something clicked for me when I talked about my imaginary wall installation. I said, "that's what we do in therapy... we visualize how we're feeling, our thoughts" - and realized I've been turning therapy homework into community art this whole time. Those thousands of colorful dots that visitors help me place aren't just decoration; they're making visible the invisible barriers we all carry.
This is what exhibitions about mental health can do that individual therapy cannot: they create collective witnessing. When I display my "Comfort and Joy" - those Yogurtland spoons I collected during years of binge eating, transformed into precious objects through painting and preservation - I'm not just processing my own trauma. I'm creating space for others to recognize their own patterns, their own coping mechanisms, their own humanity.
The other artists in "The Other Side" kept circling back to this truth: maybe there isn't an "other side" to recovery. Maybe the work IS the recovery. Maybe asking for help IS the breakthrough. These aren't conclusions you reach in isolation - they emerge through community, through seeing your struggles reflected and validated in others' work.
Celebrating Plus-Size Bodies in Art
One of the most powerful aspects of contemporary art is watching artists reclaim spaces and narratives that have long excluded them. Plus-size artists are creating some of the most vital, joyful, and necessary work happening right now - and we need more exhibitions that celebrate this movement.
Artists like Shona McAndrew are revolutionizing how we see bodies in art spaces. Her large-scale paintings and sculptures depicting herself and others in intimate, celebratory contexts create new visual language around desire, comfort, and belonging. When McAndrew created that 58-piece installation of herself and her boyfriend lying naked in bed at 2019's Spring/Break Art Show in New York, she wasn't just making art - she was expanding what stories get told in galleries. As she recalled in Galerie Magazine, "It was an odd thing, looking at a sculpture of myself and watching people look at my naked body."¹
The digital artist behind Neoqlassical Art brings this same energy to illustration, creating fat Disney characters and plus-size interpretations of pop culture icons that fill gaps many of us didn't even realize were there. As they explained to The Curvy Fashionista: "I draw fat Disney characters often because it's something I needed to see growing up. Seeing them as I always imagined is cathartic and helps me feel a certain wholeness when I never knew a piece was missing."²
This work matters because it's creating new visual vocabularies around bodies that have been systematically excluded from art history. As the comprehensive roundtable in Polyester Zine revealed, fat artists are creating work that goes beyond simple representation - they're building community, challenging systems, and proving that "the more plus size bodies are depicted in various places, the more the people in those bodies feel free, and are viewed as worthy."⁴
Historical Precedent and Contemporary Innovation
Body diversity in art has deep roots - think of Niki de Saint Phalle's joyful, voluptuous Nanas sculptures that reclaimed feminine power through exaggerated form, or the abundant figures in historical paintings that celebrated flesh and abundance. But what's happening now goes beyond aesthetic representation.
Contemporary plus-size artists are creating work that centers lived experience, community building, and joy. They're not waiting for permission or validation from traditional art institutions - they're creating their own exhibitions, communities, and conversations.
When I cut up children's toys for "Picture Perfect" - those beauty salon sets and kitchen playsets that teach girls from infancy that their worth lies in appearance and domestic service - I'm excavating the systems that shaped me while also imagining what childhood could look like if we celebrated all bodies from the beginning.
Building Community Through Shared Experience
What makes exhibitions focusing on body image and mental health powerful isn't just individual artists sharing their stories - it's the community that forms around shared recognition. When visitors help place dots on my imaginary wall, they're participating in collective healing. When someone sees their body type represented with dignity and complexity, they're being invited into a different relationship with themselves.
The growing movement of plus-size artists understands this intuitively. As one artist featured by The Curvy Fashionista put it: "you are a marvelous being, deserving of the space you take up, deserving of self-expression, deserving of compassion, representation and understanding."³
This isn't just feel-good messaging - it's cultural transformation. These artists are creating work that proves bodies come in infinite varieties, all worthy of celebration, art-making, and gallery walls.
The Urgency of Now
We're living through a moment where conversations about mental health, body acceptance, and eating disorder recovery are finally entering mainstream discourse. But the art world has been slow to catch up. Too many gallery spaces still operate under outdated assumptions about whose stories matter, whose bodies deserve celebration, whose struggles are worthy of artistic exploration.
Exhibitions like "The Other Side" represent a shift toward centering lived experience and community healing. They prove that art spaces can be places of transformation, not just observation. When galleries embrace these conversations, they become more than cultural institutions - they become community healing spaces.
Creating the Future We Need
The resistance Robin Jack Sarner encountered when trying to bring eating disorder education to schools reflects a broader cultural discomfort with honest conversations about mental health and body image. But every exhibition that centers these experiences chips away at that resistance.
Plus-size artists are leading this charge, creating work that's simultaneously personal and political, individual and communal. They're proving that marginalized communities don't need to wait for institutional permission to claim space - they can create their own.
We need more exhibitions like "The Other Side" because they do something unique: they create physical spaces where difficult truths can be witnessed collectively, where healing happens in community, where art becomes a bridge between isolation and connection.
Every time we create space for these conversations in galleries, we're proving that mental health isn't something to be hidden or ashamed of - it's part of the full spectrum of human experience that art exists to explore. And every time we celebrate plus-size bodies, eating disorder recovery, and mental health journeys through art, we're building the more inclusive, compassionate art world we all deserve.
"The Other Side: Art, Recovery, and the Human Condition" runs through August 30, 2025 at Garel Fine Art Gallery, 1236 N Sepulveda Blvd, Manhattan Beach, CA. Closing reception August 30th, 3-5pm.
Sources:
Galerie Magazine, "Next Big Things: Shona McAndrew," galeriemagazine.com/next-big-things-shona-mcandrew/
The Curvy Fashionista, "You'll Want to Own These Must-Have Illustrations by Neoqlassical Art," thecurvyfashionista.com/plus-size-art-neoqlassical-art/
Ibid.
Polyester Zine, "Being Seen & Seeing Others: How the Art World Treats Fat Creatives," polyesterzine.com/features/being-seen-amp-seeing-others-how-the-art-world-treats-fat-creatives
