ART IN FOCUS: Banksy, Choose Your Weapon (Khaki)

Posted by Rosh Boroumand on 23rd November, 2025
Filed under: From the Street

Banksy’s Choose Your Weapon is one of the artist’s most recognisable explorations of confrontation, control and resistance. First appearing as a mural in Bermondsey, South London, in 2010, the composition places an anonymous hooded figure beside a barking dog drawn directly from the visual language of Keith Haring.

Banksy Choose Your Weapon Khaki screen print

The contrast is immediate. Banksy’s figure is dark, still and largely anonymous, while Haring’s dog is graphic, animated and instantly recognisable. Yet here the dog is restrained by a heavy chain, creating an image that feels poised between control and escalation.

Rather than presenting a fixed meaning, Banksy leaves the relationship deliberately unresolved. The dog can be read as companion, threat or potential weapon, while the title shifts attention towards the idea of choice itself. Physical aggression is one possible reading, but so too is the idea that imagery, communication and art can become forms of resistance.

The reference to Haring also gives the work an important art-historical dimension. Banksy takes one of the most recognisable motifs associated with twentieth-century street culture and relocates it within his own visual language, creating a dialogue between two generations of artists who used public space as a platform for communication.

For the full history of the image, its Keith Haring reference, Pictures on Walls release and different colourways, read our guide: Banksy’s Choose Your Weapon: Keith Haring, Queue Jumpers and the Print That Marked the End of an Era.

The Khaki Edition

This Khaki edition was published by Pictures on Walls in 2010 in a signed edition of just 25. The muted khaki tone gives the dog an almost military quality, reinforcing the work’s associations with authority, conflict and control while retaining the stark graphic balance of the composition.

At approximately 70 × 70 cm, the square format gives the image a strong physical presence without overwhelming the wall. The work is signed by Banksy and accompanied by a Pest Control Certificate of Authenticity.

This example has been framed to Museum Standard Level 1 by Common Room Projects, with a restrained presentation designed to protect the work while allowing the image and colour to remain central.

Artist Banksy
Title Choose Your Weapon (Khaki)
Year 2010
Medium Screenprint in colours on wove paper
Edition 25
Signed Yes
Dimensions approximately 70 × 70 cm
Publisher Pictures on Walls, London
Authentication Pest Control Certificate of Authenticity
Framing Museum Standard Level 1, Common Room Projects

Banksy Choose Your Weapon Khaki GraffitiStreet installation view

Within a white frame, the Khaki edition retains the ambiguity that gives Choose Your Weapon much of its power: an image concerned not simply with confrontation, but with the choices made before action takes place.