I recently stumbled across an evocative sculpture that immediately captured my attention and my imagination. The artist had created a series of these “imperfectly beautiful” travelers as part of a commemoration for Marseille, France in 2013. Bruno Catalano explained his unique work below:
“From years of being a sailor, I was always leaving different
countries and places each time and it’s a process that we all go
through. I feel like this occurs several times during life and of course
everyone has missing pieces in his or her life that he won’t find
again. So the meaning can be different for everyone, but to me the
sculptures represent a world citizen.”
Viewing art for most people is a very personal experience and a piece can evoke completely different reactions and impressions from even the artist that created the work as Catalano observed. I’ve had the good fortune myself to travel extensively and build a home in three different locations, but my reaction to these sculptures was quite the opposite. In my view, all of these adventures and experiences of knowing a wide range of individuals has actually completed me. It’s been said that we are not a body with a soul, but a soul with a body. Our life’s work is to develop the soul and make it whole through our interaction with our creator and the world’s inhabitants.
These sculptures have an obvious surreal and ethereal appearance due to the omissions of vital parts of their bodies that seem to levitate in space. Their baggage adds the needed length to support and give them proportion, but more importantly, it conveys that they are on a journey. And everyone carries a different collection of baggage on the journey. Still, the gravity defying fragility of these figures is mesmerizing. They are beautifully incomplete. They demonstrate that even a broken soul can still stand resolute and move about this broken world with courage and faith in the future. Perhaps we’re wired to subliminally perceive that this imperfect world is not our final home and we are all just sojourners renting space, regardless of where we keep our stuff.
As we answer the call to adventure, emerging out of a worldwide pandemic, our own heroic journey enters the final phase of moving from our potential to full actuality of our true self. Life is a great adventure as we follow our bliss in pursuit of the divine that is within all of us and the fulfillment that the adventure brings. Hopefully, we will contribute not only to our own positive character development, but that of our fellow voyagers as well.
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