Die bleierne Zeit
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On September 26, during the first day of the 1980 Munich Oktoberfest, a homemade bomb exploded, killing 12 innocent people. The perpetrator, Gundolf Köhler – the 13th person to die – was a member of the neo-Nazi militia Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann.

In the context of the armed violence attributed mainly to the Rote Armee Fraktion during the 1970s, the attack went unnoticed, even by the authorities who were supposed to investigate it. Thus, for a long time, the attacker was presented as a “lone wolf”, minimizing the scope and seriousness of German right-wing terrorism. Years later, and despite the more than 200 wounded who survived, the most serious attack in German history (along with the Munich massacre of 1972) continues to be a story that has even been erased from the official website of the famous festival.

The artwork Die bleierne Zeit [Leaden Times], handmade with enamel on lead panels, reproduces the sign that for only one day (while the scene was being cleaned to return to “normality”) warned that the most important festival in the country would remain closed. For each exhibition the artist proposes a random modulation (each time the piece is shown this arrangement changes), in a gesture that makes its legibility impossible.