WHAT’S LEFT WHEN WE LEAVE EVERYTHING BEHIND?
In this journey through identity, cast in bronze, world-renowned artist Bruno Catalano discusses his globally renowned "Travelers" series, the interplay of presence and void, and how migration shapes universal art.
By GIOVANNA G. BONOMO
October, 2024
From New York to Venice a peculiar sight stops passersby in their tracks. Bronze figures, eerily lifelike yet impossibly fragmented, stand frozen in mid-stride. Their torsos are hollowed out,
leaving a surreal gap between shoulders and hips, through which the world behind them is visible. In one hand, each figure clutches a suitcase—a tangible anchor in a form that seems to be dissolving before our eyes.
These are the creations of Bruno Catalano, a French sculptor born in 1960, who has captivated the art world with his haunting “Les Voyageurs” (The Travelers) series. These sculptures offer a unique perspective on emigration, identity, and the universal human experience of transition, inviting viewers to complete the story with their own imagination.
At first glance, Catalano's sculptures appear incom- plete, as if some cosmic force had erased vital parts of their being. But look closer, and you'll find that what's missing is as important as what's there.
In a world increasingly defined by movement—of people, ideas, and cultures—Catalano's travelers embody the complex emotions of displacement and transition.
They are simultaneously rooted and rootless, burdened and liberated, present and vanishing. Each figure is an invitation, a visual riddle that compels the viewer to mentally fill in the blanks, to complete the form with their own experiences and imagination.
FINDING LOST ARTS
Catalano’s life has been marked by a series of departures and arrivals. Born in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1960, Catalano’s family was forced into exile when he was only ten years old, settling in Marseille, France. This personal experience of leaving nearly everything behind deeply penetrates the DNA of his work, even if he will tell you that his work doesn’t echo his personal past.
“My earliest childhood memory is of touring Europe by car with my parents: we crossed the entire continent, and as the scenery, the visits and the discoveries grew, so did my sense of wonder. When I arrived in Florence, Italy, I discovered sculpture and decided that this was what I wanted to do. But at that age, it was still just an idea, and it was only much later that I really allowed myself to think about it.”
Initially trained as an electrician by his father, he began working on boats at the age of twenty. Becoming an artist is exactly that, a becoming, collecting experiences and skills over time until it all comes together to create the artist. It wasn’t until his 40s that Catalano found his calling in sculpture, bringing with him the depth of his experiences that would carry him into this new life. In 2004, in the bustling port city of Marseille, a happy accident in a sculptor’s studio gave birth to an art form that would come to embody the very essence of human migration and transformation. A serendipitous error would become the hallmark of his “The Travelers” series, a collection that speaks volumes about the nature of identity, loss, and rebirth.
The emotional power of the “non-finito” technique that characterizes Bruno Catalano’s work has roots stretching back to the Italian Renaissance. Meaning “unfinished” in Italian, this artistic approach was popularized by Michelangelo in the 16th century. The great master intentionally left parts of his sculptures rough or incomplete, symbolizing the artist’s struggle to free the ideal form from raw stone. This deliberate incompleteness carried deep philosophical undertones about the tension between perfection and materiality.
When centuries later, Catalano stumbled upon his own version of “non-finito” through a fortuitous casting accident in his studio that left a gaping hole in one of his bronze figures, he recognized its potent symbolism, embraced the new art form that had opened up for him serendipitously, and refined this technique in his “The Travelers” series. While Michelangelo’s incomplete figures represented an eternal artistic struggle, Catalano’s fragmented travelers embody the disjointed nature of the immigrant experience, speaking to themes of identity, loss, and transformation in our globalized world, the profound truth about being torn, of existing between worlds, of carrying one’s entire life in a single piece of luggage. While children of immigrants tell the story of their parents and grandparents in reverence and awe, only the migrant knows what it’s like to have an unshakable feeling of emptiness, of having a part of their essence ripped away from them.
Catalano’s art, though infused, is not inspired by the reality of his personal migratory story. Having experienced firsthand the upheaval of leaving one land for another, he captures in bronze the complex lost emotions we are all in search of. His sculptures embody the pain, joy, sacrifice, and uncertainty that lie beneath the romantic notion of seeking a new life. Through his art, Catalano explores the gaping void left by departure and the yearning to fill it with newfound purpose in an unfamiliar world. This personal connection to displacement, which has empowered him with the empathy to channel the stories of migrants through his work, allows him to convey a profound understanding of the immigrant’s journey, transforming cold metal and artistic skill into a testimony to the human spirit’s resilience in the face of change.
SYMBOLISM & METAPHOR
The emptiness challenges our perception and invites us to mentally fill in the blanks. Catalano explains the significance of this emptiness:
“Integration is never a renunciation, even if there is always a loss in our movements, which I depict as a void and a tear in the middle of our bodies.”
This powerful metaphor speaks to the emotional and psychological gaps experienced by emigrants and, more broadly, by all who undergo significant life transitions. The suitcase, a recurring element in Catalano's sculptures, metaphorically represents not just physical belongings, but the experiences, memories, and deeply personal sentiments that ground the traveler.
It keeps them connected to their roots while providing the necessary support to move forward on their journey. "The figures in my sculptures almost always carry a suitcase, as a sign that we never replace one culture with another, but always carry our experiences and our past with us. Things add up, overlap and blend. Integration is never a renunciation, even if there is always a loss in our movements, which I depict as a void and a tear in the middle of our bodies."
Despite the voids in their bodies, Catalano's sculptures maintain a precarious balance, with the suitcase often serving as the singular connection between the conscious mind and the journeying body. This balance symbolizes the resilience of the human spirit in the face of significant life changes, a testament to the courage and determination demanded by life-changing journeys. When asked about the essence of his artistic expression, Catalano’s answer is both cryptic and intriguing: “I believe that in my case the answer is formal and lies inside the suitcases I represent.”
ORDINARY HEROES
While Catalano's work is often interpreted through the lens of the immigrant experience, the artist himself emphasizes a more universal approach.
“In just about every family, there are different origins and cross-overs between peoples and cultures. It’s true that in my case, I was confronted fairly quickly with the question of heritage and difference, as I arrived quite young in Marseille, although I was born and spent part of my life in Morocco. In my work, however, and in the Voyageurs series that I’ve been working on for a long time, I’m looking for something universal, because these characters are never affiliated, or I’d even say subjugated, to their origins.”
Catalano deliberately avoids specific cultural or national identifiers in his sculptures. “The titles of the sculptures say it all: they indicate only the first names of the people I represent, and nothing but their first names. There are no indications of countries, cultures or even families.”
This anonymity is deliberate:
“Erasing all these details allows the public to imagine and project, so that a person becomes a figure. It’s this transition from an individual to a symbol that interests me.”
“The models I choose to portray are, for the most part, people I see in everyday life, but they are rarely my family, and even less so people who are no longer with me. I don’t do historical figures, with the exception of Van Gogh, whom I’ve portrayed on several occasions. But Les Voyageurs are for the most part people of the present, and above all they’re ordinary heroes. What interests me is how we get somewhere, and how we arrive at a form in our artistic practice. Isn’t the journey always more interesting than the arrival?”
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