Embracing the Journey: Bruno Catalano’s Vision

In the vast and versatile world of sculpture, few artists can make a claim to a style so unique that it becomes instantly recognizable. Bruno Catalano is one such artist. His bronze sculptures, characterized by their distinct fragmented form, have become a beacon of contemporary art, illuminating the themes of travel, migration, and journeying that are intrinsically woven into the human experience.

Born in Morocco to a Sicilian family and later moving to France, Catalano’s life has been defined by movement and change. As a young man, he spent years sailing the seas, his voyages taking him to far corners of the globe. These experiences seeped into his art, creating a unique perspective that is both personal and universal.

His most famous series, “The Travelers,” embodies this perspective. Each figure, while physically incomplete, feels emotionally whole. These sculptures, with their substantial sections missing, are a metaphor for the artist’s own feelings of incompleteness caused by his extensive travels.

This article dives into the fascinating world of Bruno Catalano, exploring his inspiration, the development of his unique artistic style, and the profound impact of his work.

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Navigating Life’s Seas: Catalano’s Own Odyssey

Bruno Catalano was born in 1960 in Morocco, to a family of Sicilian origin. His early life was enriched by a vibrant blend of cultures, a foundation that shaped his perspective of the world and his understanding of identity. The intricate tapestry of his early experiences would go on to influence his artistic expression, forming the basis for his unique, fragmented sculptures.

When Catalano was ten years old, his family relocated to Marseille, France, setting him on a path of migration that would significantly influence his work. Moving to a new country as a child is a transformative experience, one that often leaves lasting imprints. For Catalano, this transition shaped his perception of home, identity, and belonging, themes that would later become central to his art.

In his twenties, Catalano’s life took another dramatic turn as he became a sailor. He spent several years journeying across the globe, exploring the world’s vastness while experiencing a sense of detachment from his roots. The feeling of being scattered across various places, of leaving pieces of oneself behind with every move, is a sentiment that deeply resonated with Catalano.

His voyages on the sea were not just physical journeys but also emotional and psychological explorations. The experiences of constant motion, of witnessing new places and cultures, and of grappling with the feeling of being perpetually in transit profoundly impacted his personal and artistic development.

In many ways, Catalano’s life has been a series of voyages, each one leaving him a little more fragmented, a little more spread out across the globe. His personal journey, from Morocco to France and beyond, is not just a tale of geographical migration but also a profound exploration of the human condition, of identity and belonging, of home and displacement. These themes, so central to his life, have found a powerful expression in his iconic sculptures, inviting us to reflect on our own journeys and the fragments we leave behind.

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Connect and Discover: Join ‘Your Street Art Utopia’

For those who are moved by the beauty of Bruno Catalano’s sculptures and the world of sculptures, public art and street art, we invite you to join our Facebook group, Your Street Art Utopia. Share your unique street art finds, join lively discussions, and connect with fellow street art enthusiasts.

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Which one is your favorite?

This release is mostly made up of behind-the-scenes improvements, but one update you’ll notice right away is the refreshed Followers table. It now looks and feels much more like the standard WordPress admin tables: you can customize it with screen options to hide columns or change how many followers are shown per page, and you can now delete individual followers using inline action links. We also polished the layout by increasing information density and improving the readability of date columns.

We’ve made migrations easier to kick off by automatically resolving account aliases and saving their ID form. That means you can now paste in WebFinger IDs, profile URLs, etc. and the plugin handles the rest, as long as it resolves to an ActivityPub profile.

This release also fixes a long-time annoyance: unfederated posts (like those published before the plugin was activated or imported later) will no longer be sent out to followers just because they were updated. For now, we use a simple cutoff for posts older than a month, which should cover the majority of those cases.

Coming Soon: Following Others!

Most of the work that went into this release is still invisible, hiding behind a feature flag in Advanced Settings (you can find it by opening Screen Options in the ActivityPub settings screen).

There’s really no functionality around it yet, beyond following accounts from other instances, as we have yet to start processing incoming posts and adding the ability to interact with them. But if you just can’t wait to show your appreciation for other accounts by following them, go wild!

Behind the same feature flag, we’ve also added initial beta support for Fediverse Starter Kits. This lets new users follow a set of recommended accounts from a predefined list, following the format proposed by @dansup for Pixelfed. For now, only Actor objects are supporteded, but we’re hoping to expand that over time.

Full Changelog

Added

• Added a first version of the Follow form, allowing users to follow other Actors by username or profile link.
• Added initial support for Fediverse Starter Kits, allowing users to follow recommended accounts from a predefined list.
• Ensure that all schedulers are registered during every plugin update.
• Followers and Following list tables now support Columns and Pagination screen options.
• The featured tags endpoint is now available again for all profiles, showing the most frequently used tags by each user.
• The following endpoint now returns the actual list of users being followed.

Changed

• Follower tables now look closer to what other tables in WordPress look like.
• Improved Account-Aliases handling by internally normalizing input formats.
• Minor performance improvement when querying posts of various types, by avoiding double queries.
• Set older unfederated posts to local visibility by default.
• Step counts for the Welcome checklist now only take into account steps that are added in the Welcome class.
• Table actions are now faster by using the Custom Post Type ID instead of the remote user URI, thanks to the unified Actor Model.
• The following tables now more closely match the appearance of other WordPress tables and can be filtered by status.

Fixed

• Ensure correct visibility handling for Undo and Follow requests
• Ensure that the Actor-ID is always a URL.
• Fixed a bug in how follow requests were accepted to ensure they work correctly.
• Fixed an issue where the number of followers shown didn’t always match the actual follower list.
• Fixed a PHP error that prevented the Follower overview from loading.
• Fixed missing avatar class so that CSS styles are correctly applied to ActivityPub avatars on the Dashboard.
• Fixed potential errors when unrelated requests get caught in double-knocking callback.
• Improved WebFinger fallback to better guess usernames from profile links.
• Prevent WordPress from loading all admin notices twice on ActivityPub settings pages.
• Removed follower dates to avoid confusion, as they may not have accurately reflected the actual follow time.
• Stop purging Follow activities from the Outbox to allow proper Unfollow (Undo) handling.

Downloads

• WordPress.org: activitypub.7.1.0.zip
• GitHub: tag/7.1.0

Thank you!

Big thanks to everyone who contributed code, feedback, testing, or encouragement—this community helps make the fediverse more connected with every release. ❤️

Update to 7.1.0, try it out, and tell us what you think!