Hospital of Emotions — dpb photography

This blog post is a little different from previous posts.

I want to share this extraordinary experience several months ago at The Hospital of Emotions! The exhibit has been extended through 2027; you can sign up for tickets here.

I admit: these were shot with my iPhone, not my Nikon with a big macro lens. I loved how these 80 hospital rooms were designed by 70 individual artists. Yes, 80 rooms on four floors. Each floor has a theme: grief, joy, anger, hope, and sadness.

This exhibit is at St. Vincent Medical Center, at 2131 West 3rd Street (west of Downtown Los Angeles.).

It was founded in 1856, thus becoming the first hospital in Los Angeles.

I don’t think the actual hospital was built at that time; however, in 1974, a new hospital was built on the property.

Subsequently the hospital was sold to various health care systems, the latest one went bankrupt in 2018. The hospital was used for COVID patients in 2020, then abandoned again.

This is from DTNEWS by Lizeth Calderon:

“Hospital of Emotions,” an immersive pop-up exhibition inside the former St. Vincent Medical Center, has recently transformed the building into a walkthrough experience centered on grief, joy, anger, hope, sadness and other human emotions.
The exhibition, presented by House of Art and Dreams in collaboration with ROYVA Group and St. Vincent Behavioral Health Campus, runs through Friday, July 31, ( the exhibit has been extended through January) inside the building planned for future redevelopment as a behavioral health campus.
Oshri Elmorich, founder of ROYVA Group and producer of the exhibition, said the idea began with finding an unused property that could be transformed into an interactive art space.
“We don’t do anything ever at a traditional exhibition space,” Elmorich said. “We like to take an unutilized property and give it a new life.”
He said the team first came across the former hospital through a connection with one of the campus partners and was immediately struck by what had been left behind inside the building.
“They left everything here, from the beds to IV stations,” he said. “We were like, why don’t we do it here?”

One of the artists, whose installation is located on the 5th floor, the “sadness department” spent 10 days on her piece. It’s called “What Passes Through” It’s filed with mirrors and suspended cables that look like by spider webs and lit within hollowed out lounge chairs. The intent was to force oneself to think about grief, reflect and also understand its repetitive nature.

She says:

“Grief, a lot of the time, you feel so isolated, you feel so alone, but it’s this extremely universal human experience that tends to hit people in these deep ways … for me, the thing I was clinging to there was … to feel sadness is to know what we hold dear.”

“What Passes Through” by Kim Farbota/Hospital of Emotions, submitted.

I was discharged! Finally after viewing 80 hospital rooms with unique designs that will capture your imagination, a little sadness, possible regret, and redemption.

The people who work at the exhibit give you a wrist band when you check in. They are dressed as doctors or nurses with stethoscopes around their neck. They take you to the 4th floor, as the first 3 floors are not available for visitors. Then you’re free to roam, read the descriptions of each room, then glean whatever meaning or symbolism you feel.

Several rooms pictured above stood out to me. The room with the colored IV bags was pretty. We all know IV bags are clear; however, when you’re a cancer patient getting chemotherapy, a plastic brown protective shield slides down the bag. The UV rays from the window might break down the potency of the medicine. I remember that ugly brown bag slowly dripping chemo in my chest port and the minute hand on the clock felt like the day would never end.

I loved the room with all the Post-it Notes. That was on the Gratitude floor. Simple concept: grab a single note, write what you’re grateful for and put it on the wall. Ahh. That was just pure joy and magic.

After 80 rooms (I had to skip some, too intense for me ) we went down to the lobby, they stamp your wristband and go through to the gift store.

I took that stamp and pushed it down hard on my arm. I had a fleeting thought of getting a tattoo with just that one word on my wrist!

Unlike my regular hospital stays, discharge was fast and easy: no social worker filing out forms, more forms to sign from the nurses, no waiting for approval and filling medications at the pharmacy.

Before we hit the gift shop, we walked into a massive room filled with stuffed animals. So fun, so fuzzy, so cozy. I was cured! I had made a full recovery!

It was an extraordinary exhibit.

So you have to go.

Here is the link again.

80 exhibits on 4 floors.

Discover what emotions it brings up.

If you’ve already been, let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

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