BUCHAREST/PALIMPSEST, presented by delpire & co, is the first solo exhibition in France by Romanian artist Mihai Șovăială. In recent years, Șovăială has explored the layers of his country’s capital. With its historic center and its once-rich Art Nouveau and modernist architecture razed by Ceaușescu in the 1980s, replaced by socialist housing blocks, and now covered with insulation foam by its inhabitants, Bucharest reveals the cyclical nature of its history. Its unfinished state reflects urban as well as political indeterminacy.
Șovăială’s fascination with transformation and resurfacing continued in Zurich, where he has lived since 2020. Under his lens, the city sheds its picturesque image to appear as a vast construction site — its tarps concealing as much as they reveal. Working with layered meaning, Șovăială prints his images on materials such as tarpaulin and lithographic stones, treating exhibition display and publication as extensions of the same conceptual space through self-publishing.

These concerns echo those of Anton Roland Laub, whose trilogy — Mobile Churches, Last Christmas(of Ceaușescu), and Mineriada — offers a melancholic yet biting commentary on communist and post-communist Romania. The archival dimension of these series is presented here within delpire & co’s signature display cabinet.