The 'Hospital of Emotions' Turns a Vacant LA Office into Immersive Art

A vacant office building on West 7th Street in downtown Los Angeles is now the Hospital of Emotions, a temporary installation that opened October 20, 2023, and will run for three weeks. Seven Los Angeles-based artists transform corporate architecture into a labyrinth exploring emotions like anxiety, desire, grief, and joy.

The exhibition begins with The Waiting Room, an installation by multimedia artist Carla Jiménez. Rows of distressed office chairs sit beneath flickering fluorescent lights, while audio recordings of mundane office chatter play on loop. “We wanted to start with the familiar, something that feels lifeless or static, and then gradually shift the audience into more surreal spaces,” Jiménez explained during a walkthrough on opening day. Visitors navigate through thematically varied rooms, each designed to provoke distinct emotional responses.

In Chamber of Longing, painter and sculptor Raj Patel features walls studded with fragmented mirrors and a floor covered in red velvet. This room creates a disorienting yet intimate atmosphere, evoking spatial and emotional distortion. Across the hall, The Anxiety Ward by sound artist Mia Torres bombards visitors with a cacophony of sirens, whispers, and vibrating bass tones, while projectors cast fragmented text onto the ceiling. “It’s about creating a visceral experience,” Torres said. “You don’t just observe the art—you feel it in your body.”

The final space, Room for Forgiveness, designed by performance artist Hiroshi Nakamura, offers a striking tonal shift. It features a single wooden bench under an arch of blooming jasmine, accompanied by a soundscape of soft rainfall. Unlike the preceding rooms, this one invites quiet reflection, providing visitors with a moment of reprieve.

Originally built in the 1980s as a finance company headquarters, the building has been unoccupied since 2019. The artists involved viewed its vacancy as an opportunity. Nakamura noted, “These spaces carry their own narratives. There’s something poetic about repurposing a site of economic transaction into a space for emotional exploration.”

Pop-up exhibitions like Hospital of Emotions reflect a broader trend in contemporary art: the use of unconventional spaces. From defunct factories in Detroit to repurposed churches in Berlin, artists embrace the rawness such environments provide. Scholar Karen Lloyd, an expert in site-specific art at UC Berkeley, contextualizes this shift, saying, “These venues disrupt traditional expectations of art consumption. The site becomes part of the narrative, lending a physical and conceptual texture that white-cube galleries often can’t match.”

Economics also play a role. Pop-ups avoid the high costs of long-term gallery leases, especially in cities like Los Angeles, where real estate prices soar. The Hospital of Emotions team funded the project through crowdfunding and a grant from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, totaling $75,000. This financial model underscores the growing demand for alternative modes of art presentation.

Critically, these spaces challenge the audience’s role in the art experience. Visitors to Hospital of Emotions are not passive observers; they actively navigate a constructed emotional terrain. This participatory dynamic aligns with what theorist Nicolas Bourriaud described as “relational aesthetics,” where the interaction between artwork and viewer becomes integral to the piece itself.

Despite its merits, the model faces criticism. Some argue that the impermanence of pop-up exhibitions undermines accessibility, often catering to those already attuned to the art world’s rhythms. Others question whether the reliance on unconventional spaces reflects a failure of traditional institutions to adapt.

Yet for attendees, the impact is undeniable. “I’ve been to dozens of gallery shows this year, but this felt different,” said visitor Carmen Lee, a Los Angeles-based graphic designer. “It wasn’t just about looking at art—it was about feeling immersed in it, even overwhelmed by it.”

As Hospital of Emotions nears the end of its run, questions linger about the sustainability of such initiatives. Can similar projects thrive in cities where space is increasingly commodified? Or will they remain transient phenomena? The exhibition has transformed an unassuming structure into a conduit for artistic and emotional exchange, showcasing the potential of unconventional spaces to redefine our art experience.