In today’s world, empathy feels more urgent than ever — the ability to listen, to see through another’s eyes, to be moved by what is not your own. Art nurtures empathy by opening doors to different worlds through images and creations that speak universally. Portuguese duo Halfstudio channels this power through bold, playful typography that transforms words into vibrant visual experiences. Their limited edition print Empathy reflects imbalance and tension, showing that empathy is not effortless, but a conscious act.

As the artists put it: “A word we see everywhere: headlines, campaigns, conversations. Familiar, overused, and often emptied of meaning. Empathy isn’t easy. It asks for presence, patience, and the willingness to carry what isn’t yours. It resists comfort. It’s not embellishment. It’s an act of endurance.”

Emerging from Mário Belém’s distinctive visual universe, this edition explores transformation, attraction, and the unpredictable chemistry that emerges between two individuals. Combining elements of popular culture, illustration, and symbolic imagery, the work presents a cocktail Molotov reimagined not as a device of destruction, but as a catalyst for connection and emotional intensity.

Flowers, flames, and liquid forms intertwine within a composition suspended between celebration and combustion, where opposing forces become inseparable. Characteristic of Belém's practice, everyday objects are displaced from their original function and infused with human qualities, transforming familiar forms into vessels for emotion, imagination, and narrative. Balancing tenderness with explosive energy, the work reflects on relationships as forces capable of both disrupting and illuminating the world around them.

In the early days of graffiti, the ultimate flex in the scene had a name: wholetrain. To paint not just a single carriage but an entire moving vessel from end to end was a feat of scale, coordination, and audacity. Emerging in late-1970s New York, the wholetrain became a rite of passage: it was a moving celebration of collaboration between different artists, friendship, adrenaline, and sheer artistic nerve. When a wholetrain rolled into a station, everyone stopped. It was that powerful.

This spirit of collective creation, risk, and improvisation is the foundation of WHOLETRAINS, a project initiated by Alexandre Farto aka Vhils. He invited close friends, long-time collaborators, and some of the most important graffiti artists today — Barry McGee, OSGEMEOS, and Revok, who in different corners of the world, also grew up working on trains — to take this legendary spirit and twist it into something new. Instead of steel and subway tunnels, the structure unfolds on a long sheet of paper mapping the outline of a real train from Portugal’s Sintra Line.