You might have seen ads on Instagram over the past couple of months for Hospital of Emotions—a colorful, cartoony flyer that heralds a site-specific art pop-up located in a real hospital with the tagline “a place to heal your heART.” The conceit intrigued me off the bat: 70 artists (both local and international) given hospital rooms as a canvas to transform as they wished. Hospital of Emotions ads are also referring to it as “the experience of the year.” We’re only in May so that’s still TBD, but I do think the exhibition—which is inhabiting the former St. Vincent Medical Center in Westlake and is officially open to the public as of May 27—is well worth your time.
While the entire experience is hospital-themed—you walk through a waiting room and are given an intake form and hospital wristband, employees are in doctors’ coats—it’s not the cheesy type of immersive exhibition (read: selfie factory) that you might expect. Instead you’ll find 80 rooms filled with thought-provoking, visually dazzling and, yes, eminently photogenic installations. But there’s both style and substance here. And though the tickets are definitely on the pricey side, there’s so much to see—I spent nearly two hours there during my visit—that it (almost) makes up for it.
The rooms are organized by theme; you start at the top of the building in the “Resilience Department” and make your way through clusters of rooms inspired by feelings like joy, sadness, anger, grief, fear and hope. The emphasis on emotions and mental health here is a natural fit, as the property is slated to become part of the St. Vincent Behavioral Health Campus later this year. Many artists have embraced the hospital setting—some have repurposed the existing hospital beds and hardware, others have re-created beds out of cardboard, say, or neon lights—while others take a more figurative approach to the assignment of depicting a human emotion.
Out of 80 rooms, there were lots of standouts. The first piece you’ll encounter is a larger-than-life fetus suspended in an illuminated glass column. Across the hall is Prepper’s Paradise, by artist David A Knudsen, where you’re given a pair of 3-D glasses to fully appreciate the rows of cheekily named canned goods in a blacklight-lit room. Javiera Estrada’s Twister-themed room, covered in polka dots with colorful dummies hanging from the furniture, is sure to be a crowd pleaser, as is local artist Rebecca Ann Carver’s California-inspired infinity room filled with poppies.
