Anton Roland Laub: Mobile Churches in Ceausescu’s Bucharest unfolds a haunting chapter of recent European history, one where architecture, faith, and political power collided in unsettling ways. Set against the backdrop of Bucharest in the 1980s, the project examines the violent reshaping of a city under Nicolae Ceausescu’s authoritarian vision, when vast sections of the historic center were erased in the name of progress, control, and spectacle.
At the heart of Laub’s work lies a story that borders on the surreal. While countless buildings were destroyed, several religious structures were neither fully demolished nor allowed to remain visible. Instead, churches were physically lifted, placed on rails, and moved under cover of darkness to new, concealed locations. Others were encircled by massive apartment blocks, effectively erased from public view. These displaced sanctuaries survived, but only by retreating into obscurity, stripped of their civic presence yet still bearing the weight of memory.
Laub approaches this subject with restraint and precision, combining contemporary photographs with archival documents that reveal both the mechanics and the consequences of this urban manipulation. His images show churches tucked behind concrete facades, barely accessible, their isolation intensified by the surrounding architecture. The photographs resist drama, allowing silence, absence, and disorientation to speak for themselves. What emerges is a portrait of a city shaped not only by demolition, but by deliberate concealment.
More than a historical account, Mobile Churches explores how power inscribes itself onto space and how memory survives under pressure. These buildings, withdrawn from everyday visibility, exist as fragile witnesses to a past that remains unresolved. Their continued presence challenges official narratives and raises questions about what it means to preserve history when preservation itself becomes an act of erasure.
Presented for the first time in the United States, this project forms part of Laub’s broader examination of life under late socialism in Romania. Together, his works construct a quiet but piercing reflection on architecture as ideology, and on the resilience of cultural memory in the face of systematic forgetting.
Image: Anton Roland Laub, Annunciation Church of the “Retreat of the Nuns”, Mobile Churches, 2013–2017, archival pigment print on fine art Baryta paper, Bucharest Courtesy of the artist © Anton Roland Laub
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