Hospital of Emotions: LA Exhibition Designed to Heal

More than just an exhibition, Hospital of Emotions, the art installation set in a former hospital, is first and foremost a space for emotional healing.

Hospitals are traditionally spaces dedicated to physical diagnosis and treatment, but this one shifts the focus to emotional wellbeing. It urges visitors to look inwards towards their own mental health. Ultimately, Hospital of Emotions operates as ‘A Place to Heal your heART’.

Located in Los Angeles at the former St. Vincent Medical Center, the exhibition officially opened on 27 May, and following an excellent public reception, has been extended to run until September 30, 2026. House of Art and Dreams, the pop-up exhibition company founded by Yara Sachs, produces the project. The travelling art gallery transforms existing buildings into large-scale immersive installations. This time, they bring art to a hospital, in collaboration with ROYVA and the St. Vincent Behavioural Health Campus, seamlessly uniting healthcare and creativity.

In conversation with Yara Sachs, curator of Hospital of Emotions, we uncover the inspiration and intentions behind LA’s most evocative new exhibition.

How The Hospital of Emotions Operates

From start to finish, the experience mimics a typical hospital visit. However, there’s one major difference. You aren’t there to heal your body. In fact, you are there to heal your mind.

Visitors enter past an ambulance ramp and walk through glass doors into clinical white lights. Then, staff in scrubs and lab coats greet them and attach a patient wristband to their arm. Moving from floor to floor, visitors collect stamps at each emotional ward, before being officially discharged at the end of the tour.

It’s exactly the environment Sachs intends:

‘The exhibition uses the structure of a hospital almost as a framework for moving through different emotional states. Each department and room becomes part of that journey, but without trying to diagnose people or tell them what they should feel. I wanted art to create a space where visitors could encounter emotions in a more intuitive, personal way.’

80 hospital rooms, 70 artists, 10 emotional departments, 4 floors, 1 real hospital

The Hospital brings together 70 different artists, each assigned a different hospital room to transform for a different emotional department. In fact, there are ten departments in total: Resilience, Joy, Sadness, Gratitude, Hope, Compassion, Anger, Love, Fear and Jealousy.

Sachs explains how showcasing so many designers in one exhibition both promotes individual craft and ensures each room is entirely unique.

Different Artist, Different Perspective

‘It was very important to me to give emerging artists a platform alongside established names and to bring together very different disciplines and techniques. I wanted each room to feel like entering a completely different emotional world.’

Indeed, each artist frames each emotion from their own perspective. They make their mark through a range of artistic techniques: sculpture, visual art, installation, architecture, and even street art. Consequently, they embed their own memories and feelings into their space. And so, just as a single emotion is never experienced exactly the same way by two people, no two rooms are alike.

‘A department is never just about “sadness” or “love” in a general sense. It might explore loss, memory, loneliness, relationships, vulnerability or obsession.’

Room 20 of the Fear department houses neon horned monsters designed by puppeteer Guy Dioz Bloom. The space arranges them like family members around a loved one’s hospital bed. The figures function as abstract embodiments of anxiety and fear, urging the onlooker to address their inner demons. Asking us to confront the psychological entities that ‘troll’ us within.

On a lighter note, Greg Corbino gives us Hope in Room 55. This room takes on an enchanted forest scene. Cardboard trees and hanging ribbons fill the cubic space, a beautiful juxtaposition between natural forms and rigid, constructed lines. Fashioned entirely out of discarded boxes, Corbino takes something broken and repurposes it into something beautiful and strong. He promotes the possibility of regeneration and resilience. The art of picking yourself up and starting again.

A Space of Transition

Located in what was previously the St. Vincent Medical Centre, the hospital is soon to reopen as the St. Vincent Behavioural Health Campus.

I asked Sachs if the exhibition’s timing could help the building’s transition to an emotional health facility.

‘Yes, I think there is something very meaningful about the timing. The exhibition sits almost symbolically between those two lives of the building, using art and emotion to temporarily transform the space before its next chapter begins.’

A Force of Self-Reflection

A stimulating and at times challenging experience, the Hospital of Emotions prompts deep contemplation and self-meditation. However, this introspection isn’t always what visitors anticipate. Sachs explains that many ‘come expecting a visually immersive exhibition and are surprised by how personally they connect to certain rooms.’

These connections can be intensely intimate:

‘Visitors have spoken to us about grief, relationships, childhood memories, anxiety and experiences with illness. The hospital setting can make those reactions especially powerful for people who have personal memories connected to hospitals.’

Attendee Mariah Ezra explains the multidimensional and purely subjective emotions it stirred within her:

‘I thought it would feel more like a pop-up with new artists, but this was MUCH more than that! It was an experience! Every. Little. Detail. Was thought of, and it evoked so many emotions at once that there are no words to describe this exhibit other than to experience it yourself.’

Indeed, this is the Hospital’s intention: not to prescribe how we should feel, but to give us a space to move through our emotions. To process, reflect, and ultimately, heal.