Borderline Empire

The exhibition BORDERLINE EMPIRE offers a cross-section of over ten years of Monteleone’s extraordinary social documentary photography, showing works of his DUSHA, RED THISTLE, SPASIBO, and MAIDAN series. Beginning with his first trip through the former USSR in 2001, Monteleone took photographs over the course of six years, which he first published in 2007 under the title DUSHA (soul). 
RED THISTLE: Monteleone took a film festival in the Chechen capital Grozny in 2007 as a reason to visit the area, resulting in his intense travel through the Caucasus between the Black and Caspian Seas from 2007 to 2011. He was impacted by the remnants of the two Chechen War. 
The question of who emerged as the ultimate victor in the Chechen conflict and at what price political stability was achieved, especially in Chechnya since Vladimir Putin appointed Ramzan Kadirov president of the autonomous republic in March 2007, is the theme of Davide Monteleone’s series SPASIBO (Thank you). He shot the large-format, black-and-white series over a three-month period in 2013. 
The refusal of the Ukrainian government under Viktor Yanukovich to sign the association agreement with the European Union led to the growing protests on Kiev’s Maidan Nesaleschnosti (Independence Square) beginning on November 21, 2013. On February 14, 2014, the protests escalated, claiming 80 lives, resulting in Yanukovich’s overthrow, and leading to the accession of the Crimea to the Russian Federation. Now the election of oligarch Petro Poroschenko as the new president demonstrates a minimal chance of re-stabilization in the Ukraine. Davide Monteleone’s MAIDAN photographs, some of which were taken on the Maidan this February, are images of very recent history.