The exhibition 'Ensemble' – The Frescoes of Care, running from September 19 to December 23, 2026 at the Faculty of Medicine Lyon Est, highlights works created by health students from Lyon 1 University. These graphic creations, developed in collaboration with visual artist aNa Fernandes and My Art Box as part of the Lyon Contemporary Art Biennale, explore their relationship with care, their medical studies, and human connections.
Since 2020, first-year PASS students at the faculty have participated annually in a collaborative digital fresco art experience. This initiative encourages future health professionals to express their perspectives on the medical world, otherness, and the personal transformations involved in their commitment.
Each fresco is designed as a space for dialogue between individual expression and collective memory, intimate experience and social representation. The exhibited works transform the faculty's hall into a place for contemplation and reflection on contemporary forms of care and the collective imaginations that shape them.
The initiative, driven by Evelyne Lasserre, Associate Professor of Anthropology, and Lucie Dalibert, Associate Professor of Philosophy of Techniques and Medical Humanities, with the support of Dean Gilles Rode, aims to provide a space for sensitive expression within the university curriculum.
'PASS replaced PACES in September 2020, right after lockdown, with curfews and closed universities. So, we taught remotely via Webex to students who were isolated from each other and had experienced their high school closure the previous year. Like PACES before it, PASS remains a highly selective year. Isolation and selection are not conducive to building connections and academic or personal growth. It was in this context that we wanted to create another space: a space for expression and collaboration, a space for creation, and ultimately, a space that takes care of our students,' explain Evelyne Lasserre and Lucie Dalibert.
To create the project, each student individually answers the question: 'When you hear 'Health,' what do you think of?' These contributions are then assembled by artist aNa Fernandes into a monumental collective digital artwork, reflecting the diversity of graphic singularities, emotions, and imaginations of an entire cohort. This series of works allows for observing the evolution of representations of care and university experience across successive student cohorts.
aNa Fernandes's approach is rooted in Social and Collaborative Art, where the artwork is constructed as a relational space. The digital fresco creation protocol balances individuality and collective composition, with each graphic gesture contributing to the emergence of a common image that maps the training cohort. The digital platform ensures massive, simultaneous, and inclusive participation.
