Depression has been recognised as a form of suffering since Antiquity, although its names and explanations have evolved over the centuries, from the earliest Mesopotamian descriptions to modern psychiatry. Its first traces can be found in Mesopotamian texts, before Hippocrates theorised it as “melancholia”, linked to an imbalance of the humours. Later, Avicenna offered a more refined analysis. In the nineteenth century, alienists — the precursors of psychiatrists — made it a central object of the emerging field of psychiatry. Despite these developments, a recognisable form of suffering has remained identifiable across time.
The exhibition Faces of Depression explores this history to show that depression is not a single reality, but a multiple one. It highlights the diversity of its symptoms, the ways in which medicine and research have described them, and the representations offered by art, which has long translated this experience in its own way. This exhibition, developed following our call for expressions of interest, was created in collaboration with the Lille Neuroscience & Cognition research unit (LilNCog) and in connection with the Calypso project. It includes around ten descriptive panels, accompanied by a digital tablet allowing visitors to test the Calypso tool, as well as a virtual reality space illustrating how depression can modify our actions and our perception of the environment.
The Calypso project — Objective Clinical and Psychiatric Analysis — lies at the heart of this exhibition. It uses artificial intelligence and computer vision to analyse observable signs of depression, including facial expressions, head and body movements, voice characteristics, and gait. Its aim is to complement traditional clinical observation with more objective measures, in order to improve our understanding of depression and to develop more precise and better-adapted diagnoses and treatments. The Calypso project is notably led by staff from the LilNCog research unit and Lille University Hospital.
