Artists

Adrian Kohler is considered one of the world’s leading puppeteers. He was born in the Eastern Cape, near Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth), and grew up with a foundation in woodwork and creating moving figures as his father was a cabinet maker and his mother was a puppeteer. Kohler studied at Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, and graduated in 1974 majoring in sculpture. Kohler worked at The Space Theatre in Cape Town and as a lecturer in Botswana before co-founding the Handspring Puppet Company in 1981.

Kohler has won many awards with Basil Jones, the co-founder of the Handspring Puppet Company, including the ACT Lifetime Achievement Award (Arts & Culture Trust Awards of the President), a Naledi Award for War Horse, a Vita Award for Faustus in Africa, shared with William Kentridge, and a Fleur du Cap award in 2001 for The Chimp Project. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Tshwane University in 2006, an Honorary Doctorate in Literature from the University of Cape Town in 2012, and in 2018 he received the John F. Kennedy Gold Medal in the Arts from the Kennedy Centre International Committee on the Arts.

Kohler’s acclaimed puppets have been exhibited internationally, including at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, USA, the Pennsylvania State University and the Frye Art Museum in Seattle in 2008, and the National Theatre Gallery in London in 2012. His puppets have also been exhibited widely all over South Africa, including the Episodes exhibition which travelled to numerous venues throughout the country between 2001 and 2003, in a solo capacity at the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival in 2011 and more recently at the Circa Gallery in Johannesburg, which included editioned linocut portraits of many Handspring puppets. Kohler’s puppets are represented in both public and private collections, including the Munich Stadtmuseum in Germany, the Constitutional Court and the Old Mutual Art Collection in South Africa.