The Hyogo Prefectural Yokoo Emergency Hospital is open for a limited time at the Yokoo Tadanori Contemporary Museum of Contemporary Art in order to examine the relationship between the artist Yokoo Tadanori’s body, and his life and work.

At this hospital, we have set up a variety of wards, such as ophthalmology, pediatrics, and surgery, based on the fundamental principles of Yokoo’s way of life, in which he places greater trust in physical sensation than mental or emotional experience. With a wide range of works and documents, including Yokoo’s paintings, prints, drawings, writings, and favorite books, the facility is designed to give viewers an opportunity to reexamine their relationship with the physical.

The inpatients’ ward is distinguished by a number of works related to Yokoo’s medical history, which includes various maladies large and small, including asthma, insomnia, bone fractures, shingles, and facial palsy. In addition, we present diaries and sketches that the artist made while sick in bed.

To Yokoo, a sudden outbreak of injury or illness is not merely something abhorrent, it is also something that can also help him overcome a crisis or inspire him to reexamine his life and art.

Today, having passed the age of 80, Yokoo’s physical problems are compounded by problems of old age. In this hospital, we focus on physical changes such as deteriorating hearing and vision that Yokoo is currently confronting while striving to explore the links between old age and artistic creation.

This hospital experiment is an examination of Yokoo’s physical awareness of his life and work, stretching from his childhood, which was informed by sensory learning, to the present day as he comes face to face with old age. It is our hope that it will help you improve your health.