Pets
Teena Capra was a dachshund and performance artist. She is survived by her owner, David, and a body of work that includes major pieces for the MCA and Kaldor Public Art Projects. By Amelia Winata.
The life and times of Teena Capra (2010-2025)
Teena Capra has died at the age of 15. This might sound like an untimely death, except that Teena was a dachshund. She belonged to Sydney artist David Capra and during her lifetime featured in many of Capra’s performance works, to the point where the two became synonymous.
The representation of pets in art is nothing new. Looking deep into the art historical canon, we might think of Jan van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Wedding (1434), which features, at the feet of the merchant and his wife, a small scruffy dog that is said to represent faithfulness. In more recent times, American artist Carolee Schneemann produced a series of photographs of her kissing her cat (Infinity Kisses, 1981-87).
Reflecting on Teena’s life and work with Capra, what is clear is her critical role as a bridge to diverse audiences. These were often people from vulnerable circumstances who otherwise had little to no experience with contemporary art.
Born under a house in Nyngan, in central New South Wales, and named in homage to the Tena incontinence pad – she would often pee with excitement when greeting people – Teena came at a critical point in Capra’s career. Disillusioned with the art world, he had considered giving up making art altogether. “Everything I had developed as an artist had somehow lost its meaning,” he says. “The scaffolding around contemporary art and conceptual ideas had all fallen by the wayside.”
This sense of cynicism is common among artists and continues to grow in the face of increased funding cuts and censorship. In the early 2010s, however, Capra’s sense was that to remain relevant to collectors, curators or institutions, artists needed to be constantly producing new work and operating in art circles. This, he says, is a recipe for burnout.
Capra chose instead to work on what brought him personal satisfaction, which was working with Teena in time-based works. A 2013 performance at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) announced the “birth” of Teena into the art world. Titled Throne Room (Wizard of Oz Intercession), Teena would appear on the hour every hour from behind a curtain into a Wizard of Oz-themed set. Drawing on the film’s central motif of finding one’s way home, Throne Room suggested that, with Teena, Capra had finally found home in the form of his dog.
My own introduction to Teena was through a 2016 segment on the Channel Nine breakfast program Today, a staple of the middle-class suburban home. Here, Capra and Teena were promoting Eau de Wet Dogge, a tongue-in-cheek cologne that emulated Teena’s scent, produced as part of Melbourne Fashion Week alongside West Space and the Festival of Live Art. Available on YouTube, the clip is a cringe-worthy watch. Capra can barely get a word in to contextualise the purpose of the perfume and is treated like a court jester by hosts Karl Stefanovic and Lisa Wilkinson.
Teena begins by looking indifferent, staring blankly ahead while cradled in Capra’s arms. When another host appears and comes near, Teena threatens to nip him. Throughout, Stefanovic pretends to dry retch and at one point asks, “Who cares?” Capra says, “It was a mixture of them humouring me and bullying me.”
This form of populist television is not something many artists would aspire to, but for Capra this appearance and others like it gave him exposure to the general public. These audiences became his key target in the years after his initial disillusionment with art, with Teena being the critical factor that allowed him to reach them.
Indeed, one of the more unexpected byproducts of dog ownership is the accrual of relationships that are simultaneously intimate and anonymous. It is common to know every dog in the park’s name but none of the owners’, to become used to seeing the same people at the same time each day and forming a strong knowledge of their daily habits.
These dynamics played out for Capra and Teena in the gallery setting, too. Capra recalls, for example, a 2019 picnic for humans and their dogs that he organised as part of Kaldor Public Art Projects at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. For many of those who attended, Teena and Capra became critical points of connection to art that they otherwise might not engage with. On that day, Capra formed unlikely friendships with people who continue to see him as their link to art, often sending him photographs of their outings to galleries or the Sydney Opera House.
For Puppy Love, a 2019 installation at the Art Gallery of NSW that paid homage to Jeff Koons’s Puppy, Teena and Capra sat with visitors every Sunday where, in Capra’s words, they became “accidental counsellors”. As Capra points out, museums are a haven for people suffering from loneliness and isolation. However, these conditions usually remain invisible.
Puppy Love attracted people who would come to stroke Teena but would end up divulging their struggles to Capra. “Teena had it easy because she didn’t have to use words, but she was bringing out things from people all the time,” says Capra. Did Teena mind the physical touch of strangers and the trauma-dumping? For the most part she liked it. “But sometimes she would look at me and I would know she wanted to leave and we would gather up and go.”
Not only did Teena allow people to express their vulnerabilities, she also brought out the softer side of many. Capra recounts performing at the 2013 Cementa Festival in Kandos with Teena. Here, a gang of thuggish-looking boys took it upon themselves to be Teena’s protectors. At Cementa, Capra performed Ministry of Handshakes, where he wore a 2.5 metre-long prosthetic arm that he used to shake locals’ hands. The performance was inspired by a woman Capra met on his train commute who claimed God had instructed her to shake the hand of every passenger in the carriage. As Teena and Capra traversed the town, so did these boys, watching over them closely. “They had a reputation,” says Capra. “But it was amazing how art and Teena softened them.”
Now that Teena is gone, will Capra finally leave the art world, as he was considering 15 years ago? He hasn’t decided. Capra and I consider for a moment the artist Anastasia Klose, who, at the height of her career, threw it all in to work at a no-kill dog rescue in Sydney. Disillusioned with the pressures of the art world, she turned to dogs to give her purpose.
To be sure, the story of Teena is also the story of Capra’s disillusionment with the capitalist and corporatised aspects of the art world. Unlike Klose’s negative experience of the contemporary art scene, however, I get the sense that Capra’s was ameliorated by Teena.
Speaking now, Capra says Teena was “just an ordinary dog”. The admission is strangely refreshing. Teena was untrained, refusing to even do the basics, like sitting. During performances, she ignored Capra, often running rogue. In most photographs from these performances, Teena would be cradled on her back in Capra’s arm – presumably to prevent her from causing mayhem.
For the past few years, Teena was blind and preferred to stay at Capra’s mother’s house in Macksville, where she sunbathed with kangaroos and barked incessantly for food – three meals a day became the norm. She did, however, love the limelight. “She got used to the sound of applause,” says Capra. “She would really perk up when she heard it. She really liked it.”
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on July 12, 2025 as "Teena Capra (2010-2025)".
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