A Vatican-backed exhibition series is putting human feeling at the centre of contemporary art, with seven shows opening at the same time in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Italy, Portugal, Angola and the United States. Organised under the name of the Catholic Universities Art Triennale, the project brings together more than 100 artists, among them Arthur Jafa, Jeremy Frey and Mona Hatoum, and is framed as a celebration of creativity that machines cannot replicate.

The first edition carries the umbrella title Exercises in Empathy. Its organisers say empathy and self-reflection, rather than technical progress, should drive human development. Each of the seven exhibitions, staged at Catholic universities, explores a different facet of what it means to be human, from the physical to the intellectual, and the works on show include painting, sculpture, installation and moving image.

The initiative was commissioned by Cardinal Tolentino de Mendonça, who leads the Holy See's Dicastery for Culture and Education. It builds directly on an encyclical from Pope Leo XIV about protecting the human condition from the manipulative power of artificial intelligence. The Pope has argued that AI tools lack the emotional, relational and spiritual outlook through which people grow in wisdom, and therefore do not truly comprehend their own output.

Among the works featured is a 2013 sculpture by Brazilian artist Vanderlei Lopes, shown alongside pieces by Julião Sarmento, Andreia Santana and Carlos Bunga. The triennale positions itself as a counterweight to a moment in which machine-generated images are flooding visual culture, insisting that art's value lies in lived experience, memory and moral imagination rather than in speed or scale.