Los Angeles's new Hospital of Emotions pop-up gives artists keys to the asylum

A former St Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles is being used for a temporary immersive art experience called Hospital of Emotions. Visual artists take over more than 80 spaces, including examination rooms and operating chambers, while the building is scheduled for renovation into a behavioural health centre. The installations are organized into departments for emotional states such as joy, hope, fear, anger, sadness, resilience, and compassion. Visitors move through the spaces to achieve catharsis. Some works use playful, cartoon-like approaches that contrast with the sterile hospital environment, while others use black-light or inflatable effects that can feel more like spectacle than emotion. A curator-created piece uses dyed saline in IV stations, turning the fluid bags into rainbow-like visuals under old operating lamps.

"Unlike the last major hospital takeover here ten years ago, when the art consultant John Wolf brought a series of unnerving (or actually bloody) works by artists such as Max Hooper Schneider and Tala Madani into a hopelessly grimy institution in West Adams, this one has a cheerier and more cartoon-y approach (think Pixar's Inside Out)."

"“Normally when you go to the hospital, you treat the body, but this time the exhibition is about healing your heart,” Saachs says. She has divided the pop-up installations into different “departments” dedicated to emotional states such as joy, hope, fear and anger, with the idea that visitors will move through them and achieve some kind of catharsis."

"The results are, as you might predict, all over the place. While some black-light or inflatable artworks scream Burning Man -more emoji than emotion-others put the intensity of the hospital setting to good, playful or serious use."

"From the Fear Department From the Resilience Department From the Joy Department The curator Yaara Sachs has contributed her own simple yet exuberant piece: a cluster of IV stations where she has injected the sterile, saline water with different coloured dyes. The fluid bags now look like rainbow ice popsicles, if you ignore the antique operating lamps overhead."

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