Botto&Bruno's 'Songs of a Lost World' at Cortona on the Move

The Italian artist duo Botto&Bruno (Gianfranco Botto and Roberta Bruno) created a site-specific wallpaper installation titled 'Songs of a Lost World' for the elliptical hall of Palazzo Baldelli in Cortona, Italy. The work was commissioned by the international photography festival Cortona on the Move, now in its 16th edition, curated by Renata Ferri and running from July 16 to November 1, 2026. The 2026 edition, titled 'Beautiful Country', investigates Italy over recent decades as an open visual atlas. The installation uses manual collage to juxtapose about 900 photographs from the artists' archive, including images of Italian urban peripheries and industrial archaeology, notably the Marghera industrial pole photographed in 1997. The wallpaper evokes the Mannerist frescoes of Giulio Romano's Sala dei Giganti in Palazzo Te, creating a sense of vertigo and envelopment. Curator Carola Allemandi notes the work's tension between fragments and a coherent, habitable unity, referencing the concept of ephemeral architecture. The installation is divided into a black-and-white upper band and a color lower band, a non-perspectival depth code reminiscent of late antique art. Botto&Bruno cite influences from Mannerism (Pontormo), Surrealist collage (Hannah Höch, John Heartfield), and the works of J.G. Ballard, John Carpenter, and Katsuhiro Ōtomo. The interview was conducted by Aurelio Andrighetto.