The ‘Hospital of Emotions’ in Los Angeles: An Immersive Art Experience

Just beyond the ambulance and wheelchair ramp, Dr. Moodswing and Dr. Feelgood, dressed in starched lab coats, stand ready to greet visitors. A unique attraction awaits inside the former St. Vincent Medical Center near downtown Los Angeles. This is not a typical hospital visit focused on health, but a journey into the ‘Hospital of Emotions’, an immersive art experience exploring human feelings.

The St. Vincent Medical Center, founded in 1856 by the Daughters of Charity to aid the poor, went bankrupt in 2020. Private investors later acquired it with plans to redevelop it into a homeless shelter and a mental health and drug treatment facility, beginning later this year. Meanwhile, its rooms host 80 art installations by 70 artists, filling four floors of clinical space with explorations of emotions from medical and family trauma to grief over climate change and detention centers.

Sterile hospital environments now burst with vivid art. With influences from Meow Wolf’s artistic approach to entertainment, artists converted these spaces into colorful realms. Creatures from Pixar’s ‘Inside Out’ were an inspiration, with colors representing emotions like joy and sadness. A fuzzy orange monster winks from a nurse’s station while green giants symbolizing jealousy face each other in an exam room. Decorated with cartoonish expressions, their faces create a blend of the humorous and absurd.

IV bags dangle, filled with rainbow-colored liquids. Overhead, exam lights bloom with artificial flowers. Crutches are draped with whimsical wigs. In the ‘Resilience Department’, a glass butterfly refracts light, accompanied by an unsettling audio piece reflecting an artist’s experience with an epileptic seizure. Sounds contrast between labored breathing in earphones and screams replayed in the room, crafting a surreal, dreamlike atmosphere.

Nearby, artist Melan Allen fills a room with a thousand sunny-side-up eggs on the bed, walls, and floor. These eggs symbolize the food she disliked as a child but was forced to eat. Sharon Maxwell, who traveled from San Diego, found this exhibit resonated with her due to her history with eating disorders and sterile hospital environments.

Visitors become part of a renewing experience, where art connects them beyond the traditional hospital roles of patient, nurse, or doctor. “Being in the bed treated for mental health issues feels like you’re a spectacle,” Maxwell explained.

The ‘Fear Department’ features virtual speeches on post-traumatic stress by veterans using AI to amalgamate real experiences. Called ‘The Ward That Never Closed’, the installation presents a somber reflection on lingering fears.

Down the hall, portraits drawn with frenetic lines cover a room, created by an artist who spent 15 months in a U.S. immigration detention center. Grisha Stepanian fled Russia in 2022 for political reasons and because of his identity as a gay man. His words explore how fear embeds itself in the body as he recounts his journey for safety.

Other installations blend medical aesthetics without dictating viewers’ emotions. Artist Dongpu Ling’s transparent figurines, molded from packing tape, evoke a vision shared by her grandfather shortly before his death. These blank-faced figures, twisting into various forms, appear on gurneys and blend into the environment’s vents.

Ling recalls her emotional process while creating the installation, intensified by a chilling moment in the hospital basement. The cold, silent space, often a setting for stored bodies, left an impression on her.

For ultrasound tech Ondrea Boggs, the art reinforces the perseverance and strength witnessed while working in intensive care. Art showcased how sadness and joy coexist. “Seeing someone stay hopeful is encouraging,” Boggs noted. “Both can be shared simultaneously.”

Visitors like Maxwell found solace in shared human emotions, from joy to pain. “This exhibit profoundly displays humanity,” she commented.

The ‘Hospital of Emotions’ is open through September 30, 2026, with tickets priced at $58.