Dogs of War

The three-headed dog puppet Dogs of War was created by Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones of Handspring Puppet Company for Ubu and the Truth Commission (1997), directed by William Kentridge. In interviews, the artists recall conceiving the figure as a grotesque embodiment of apartheid’s unleashed forces of repression; a creature that could growl, menace, and fracture into multiple voices at once.

The puppet’s suitcase body, used in performance to animate Brutus, carries its own layered history, having once belonged to Kentridge’s father, Sir Sydney Kentridge, and originally gifted to him by Bram Fischer, both prominent anti-apartheid lawyers.

After undergoing conservation treatment in the artists’ Kalkbay studio in May 2025, Dogs of War continues to resonate as both a theatrical invention and a sculpture, linking personal memory, political struggle, and the ongoing pursuit of justice within the Constitutional Court Art Collection.