LABS Contemporary Art is pleased to present FRINGE, a group exhibition curated by independent curator Marta Orsola Sironi.
On this occasion, works by nine emerging international artists will be presented, spanning painting, sculpture, and video art, creating a path that reflects on marginal zones, places of transition, and the tension between individual identity and collective memory.

The opening will take place on June 14th from 17.00 to 21.00, and the exhibition will be open until September 13th at LABS Contemporary Art, Via Santo Stefano 38, Bologna.
The project arises from an intimate dialogue with the unique space of LABS Contemporary Art: located in the heart of Bologna, the building was constructed in the 13th century as the Church of Santa Maria della Cerola, part of the Ospitale di San Biagio and the Ospitale di Santa Maria dei Servi. After 1816, when the Compagnia dei Servi order was dissolved, the chapel was transformed into a tavern and, in 2014, became a contemporary art gallery. The term “Fringe” indicates both a border or its decorative part and something marginal, peripheral, or external to a group; therefore, something that is not part of the mainstream and is unconventional.

FRINGE explores the permeability of boundaries and the threshold as a fertile place of encounter, reflecting on the construction of collective and individual memory, the symbolic use of imagery as a tool for orientation, and the possibility of inner liberation. The curatorial research draws from references ranging from ancient Greek mnemonic techniques to Giulio Camillo's Renaissance memory theaters, from Giordano Bruno's visionary thought to Aby Warburg's studies on the survival of images and cultural memory. Along this path, memory reveals itself not merely as an archive, but as a creative drive and cosmic participation, the foundation for a new freedom of thought. At the same time, FRINGE engages with more contemporary reflections on space and dwelling, drawing from Sara Ahmed's concept of orientation, Gaston Bachelard's poetics of space, and the need for imagination as a tool of resistance and transformation, as seen in the works of Annie Ernaux and Jeanne Benameur.
FRINGE thus presents itself as an invitation to cross and inhabit borderlands, to be lulled by instability in order to recognize, in movement, memory, and imagination, the possibility of finding one's place in the world.