Shaboygen — Steven and William Ladd

Solo Exhibitions

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Shaboygen
The Invisible Dog Art Center
Brooklyn, New York
September 15 - November 3, 2012

Curated by Steven and William Ladd

IIn 2009, we were asked to create a chandelier for the grand opening of The Invisible Dog Art Center in Brooklyn. That early collaboration left a lasting imprint, and three years later, the team invited us back for a major installation called Shaboygen—a sprawling exhibition across the entire ground floor that brought our signature box-based sculptures into a fiery new context.

The title, Shaboygen, is a word from our youth—a kind of code for utopia, born from a misheard place name and transformed into a symbol of joy, safety, and possibility. The show was inspired by one of our most surreal childhood memories: our family’s station wagon catching fire on the way to school. We escaped unharmed, but the trauma stuck with us—and later, became fuel for art.

Installation Photos Simon Courchel for The Invisible Dog Art Center

“Shaboygen was a foundational project for us, reaffirming our love for storytelling through materials, and our growing relationship with The Invisible Dog as a site for experimentation, memory, and community.”

To translate that experience, we created hundreds of hand-sewn boxes lined in Angora rabbit fur and filled them with rolled textiles in a spectrum of reds, oranges, and pinks—colors of fire and smoke. Many materials came from remnants left behind at The Invisible Dog’s former life as a belt factory, bringing ghostly traces of the building’s past into the work.

The installation unfolded like a textile landscape, both painstakingly crafted and emotionally raw. It told a story through texture, form, and color—an abstract but visceral depiction of fear, transformation, and resilience. It was also one of our earliest large-scale uses of repurposed factory materials, a turning point that deepened our commitment to working with recycled and found objects.

“This was also one of our earliest large-scale uses of repurposed factory materials, a turning point that deepened our commitment to working with recycled and found objects.”