RAJKAMAL KAHLON

The ABC’s of Torture and State Violence are a commissioned set of drawings about state violence and torture made on the pages of an English translation of Carl von Ossietzky’s collected writings, titled “The Stolen Republic," 1971. After winning the Nobel Prize, hospitalised and still under surveillance by the National Socialists, Ossietzky attempted to share his experience of being tortured through a coded request to journalists. He expressed an interest in the subject of torture and asked if anyone could locate a book for him on medieval torture. I made this set of drawings as my response to his request. The drawings are a way to acknowledge the severe physical punishment and violence born by Ossietzky at the hands of a repressive state threatened by the power of his words and ideas.