Surrealism: The Travelers of Bruno Catalano

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Inspired by his own painful experience, a 12-year-old boy who had to leave his land (Morocco), Bruno Catalano (1960), famous French sculptor whose proposal consists of a series of fragmented sculptures that hold a suitcase and which he entitled Les Voyageurs (travelers), are exhibited in Marseille.

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The fragmentation of these sculptures that seem "incomplete", represent the void that from the entrails feels all immigrants (voids that can never be filled), leaving behind families, dreams, loves, lived experiences, emotions, culture, roots, friends , titles, status, goods.

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Each "traveler" carries a suitcase full of dreams, hopes, challenges, expectations, fears. A whole life summarized in a suitcase and in which there is no room for the unnecessary, where space opens up to the feeling of not belonging to any place, to the uncertainty of the new destiny and to the goal of a better well-being.

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Serious face, nostalgic and facing forward, pushed into the infinity of time and space; the defragged traveler stripped of his life and his story summarized in a suitcase, walks towards his salvation, hoping to engage in his unknown land.

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Exposed to discrimination, to mockery, to rejection or acceptance, to success or failure, the traveler pushed by suffering into exile, guided by survival towards his freedom and fullness, continues ahead despite his gaps.

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This work of Catalano, leads me to the reflection that as citizens we should be supportive and empathetic with the immigrants who arrive to our land, at the end of accounts ..., beyond being "travelers" they are "brave".

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