Scabby steals the spotlight

Scabby the Rat is in the midst of an unprecedented month-long residency. An inflatable creature most commonly seen outside construction sites or side by side with striking workers, Scabby can now be glimpsed in a more rarefied atmosphere — a fine art gallery. 

“Scabby: A Rat About Town,” at the Open Source Gallery, a small showroom in Park Slope, Brooklyn, is a tribute both to the iconic rat and to the New Yorkers who picket alongside him by the Austrian artist Marlene Hausegger. 

Emblazoned on Scabby are lines from the Bruce Springsteen song “Factory,” a working-class anthem Hausegger said has been translated by an Austrian singer and is very popular in her home country.  

“A lot  of his music is about working life and workers,” Hausegger said in a Monday interview. The artist was inspired to include The Boss’ lyrics — while changing each utterance of the word “man” to “woman” — after seeing him in concert last year.  

The printed lyrics also resonate with the auditory aspect of the exhibit, a 15-minute recording of an interview that Hausegger conducted with Natalie Monarrez, a seven-year employee at Amazon. Monarrez's voice echoes from the back room of the exhibit and can be heard throughout. 

“The pain and fear of the song related to what she told me about her life and working conditions,” Hausegger said of the connection between Monarrez and Springsteen. She recorded both audio and video of her discussion, but the artist intentionally didn’t include the visual aspect as a symbolic gesture, pointing out how workers are often forgotten about. 

"For me it was very important to add this testimony, but I didn’t want to put the video,” Hausegger said. “You don’t see the faces or lives of the people behind who are working like hell to get you the package." 

Surrounding Scabby are photos that Hausegger took of a 2022 picket on the Upper East Side at which the rat was present. She cut lashes into the photos with a knife to mimic scratches doled out by the rodents.  

Scabby the Rat at the Open Source Gallery in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Courtesy Stefan Hagen

‘Even the rat needs some rest’ 

Hausegger first encountered Scabby in 2008 outside of a construction site in Manhattan when she was living and working in New York. She had been familiar with unions, strikes and protests in her home country but had never seen any kind of inflatable used alongside them. 

More than a decade later, fascinated by the rat and in the middle of projects for unions in Austria, Hausegger pitched the idea of highlighting Scabby to the Open Source Gallery as an exhibit that would be humorous but also drive home a political message. The hardest part of setting up the exhibit was getting the inflatable rat in the first place, Hausegger said. 

Local unions in New York were unwilling or unable to give up their own inflatables and buying one from Big Sky Balloons, the non-union Plainfield, Illinois, company that makes rats, was too expensive for the budget she had been given. Ultimately, Hausegger ordered an off-brand version of Scabby from China, also made from non-union labor. 

“It was the only solution,” she said. 

Each time the recording of Monarrez repeats in the exhibit, Scabby automatically deflates and then slowly reinflates. Hausegger said that it symbolizes the exhaustion and fatigue that workers face. 

"Even the rat needs some rest,” she said.  

“Scabby: A Rat About Town” is on display until Nov. 29. Hausegger will join Monarrez on  Nov. 20 for a question-and-answer session and screening of the documentary “Union,” a film featuring Monarrez that details the unionization campaign at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island.