The title of the work comes from Kafka's novel In the Penal Colony. The novel is about an unnamed place of exile and a penal colony for murderers. It describes the last use of an elaborate torture and execution device that carves the condemned man's sentence into his skin, ultimately leaving him to die within 12 hours. Similarly, there were gulags in the former Soviet Union and labor camps in China during the Cultural Revolution, where many people were exiled to desolate and remote places. After enduring hard labor and starvation, most of them died, including many children. This series of drawings on paper is based on records of the labor camps and serves to commemorate those who died in these camps.
