What is Shepard Fairey’s piece called “Dissobey”?

Artist Statement

DISSOBEY I have been a fan of Slick’s graffiti and graphic design since the early 90’s. I was following graffiti of course, where Slick’s street work was legendary, but I also followed the emergence of streetwear brands like X-Large, Third Rail, and Fuct, all of whom Slick did great tee graphics with. I was impressed with Slick’s artistic versatility and his choices of references and subversive twists in his graphics. I finally met Slick about 12 or 13 years ago at an art show at our gallery. He was cool to my face and then did a big drippy tag in our elevator. I didn’t really care except that our landlord said our art shows were attracting “the wrong element” and warned us to keep things clean. After that, Slick and I bumped into each other pretty regularly and at some point he told me he was doing a Buckwheat “OTAY” parody of OBEY. I was flattered and I enjoyed seeing some of the prints around LA. When Slick and I talked about doing an “official” collaboration, we liked the idea of an homage to creative competition and transgression. You either learn to love the chaos of the streets or you don’t last in that realm. Slick and I battled over a prominently located electrical box near MOCA in 2011 and that is what inspired the look of the poster we made. Slick did a great job capturing the look of layers of posters and the printer Black Sunshine translated the image beautifully. Thanks for love, hate, and art Slick! -Shepard From Slick: This collaboration has been over 20 years in the making. To finally see this come full circle is just amazing. The image is inspired from the battle of the box that went on a few years back. This one electrical box in particular in Lil Tokyo. Big ups to Shepard, OBEY and OBEY Clothing for making this happen. Some may think the DISSOBEY collection was a diss on OBEY. I see it more as celebration of the essence of street art. Thank u Black Sunshine for the beautiful workmanship on this piece. Big ups to our soldiers “the DZT crew” on the streets keeping it 100………. 18 x 24 inch screen print on thick white paper. Signed by Shepard and Slick. Numbered edition of 187. $80.

Summary

Dissobey is a 2015 collaboration between Shepard Fairey and graffiti artist Slick, published by Obey Giant. The 18 x 24 inch screen print on thick white paper renders the layered, weathered look of overlapping street posters, inspired by a real-life poster-and-tag "battle" the two waged over an electrical box near MOCA in Lil Tokyo. It plays on Slick's Buckwheat "OTAY" parody of OBEY, framing the rivalry as a celebration of street-art chaos. Printed by Black Sunshine, it is signed by both Shepard and Slick in a numbered edition of 187 and was released at $80.

Why It Matters

Dissobey documents a two-decade arc of mutual influence and creative friction between Fairey and West Coast graffiti legend Slick, turning a literal turf battle over an electrical box near MOCA into a finished, jointly authored artwork. Both artists frame the piece not as a diss but as an homage to the competitive energy that drives street culture, which makes it an unusually self-aware artifact about how Fairey's OBEY iconography circulated, was parodied, and was absorbed back into his own work. The visual conceit of layered, drippy, overlapping posters is itself a meta-commentary on the street as a contested surface. For collectors, the dual signature of Shepard and Slick is the differentiator: it is a true two-name collaboration rooted in a specific Los Angeles moment, tied to streetwear lineage (X-Large, Third Rail, Fuct) that Fairey explicitly cites. That cultural specificity, plus the relatively contained edition of 187, gives it a focused appeal among collectors who track Fairey's collaborative output and the broader graffiti-meets-design crossover of the early 2010s.

Collector Perspective

This print appeals to collectors who pursue Fairey's collaboration prints and to those with a foothold in graffiti and streetwear history, given Slick's involvement and his ties to X-Large, Third Rail, and Fuct. The dual signature of Shepard and Slick and the modest numbered edition of 187 make it a natural cornerstone for a focused OBEY-collaboration grouping rather than a casual decorative buy. Visually, the layered torn-poster aesthetic reads as authentically street and pairs well with other Fairey collaboration works. It fits a collection organized around creative-rivalry narratives or Los Angeles street-art history, where the documented "battle of the box" origin story adds provenance and conversation value beyond the image itself.

Historical Context

Dissobey sits in Fairey's mid-2010s run of collaboration releases through Obey Giant, a period when he increasingly partnered with figures from graffiti and music to extend OBEY's reach. The work formalizes a relationship Fairey traces to the early 1990s, when he followed Slick's graffiti and tee graphics, and to a 2011 poster confrontation near MOCA that gave the print its layered look. By presenting Slick's earlier Buckwheat "OTAY" parody of OBEY as a point of pride rather than friction, the release reflects how Fairey, two decades past the original Andre the Giant sticker campaign, positioned his iconography as something living within street culture's call-and-response. It is a collaboration-driven entry rather than an overtly political one, characteristic of this stretch of his catalog.

FAQ

Related Works

Obey X Cope2 Takeover2013 · Another Fairey collaboration with a graffiti writer, parallel street-art crossover.

Obey X Huf San Francisco '932016 · Branded OBEY collaboration print from the same mid-2010s collaborative run.

Chaos2016 · Shares the street-chaos theme and collaboration-driven framing.

Disorder2016 · Companion to Chaos, same disorder-of-the-streets motif and collaboration lineage.

Wasted Youth / Your Eyes Here (CAC Malaga Edition)2015 · Same-year OBEY iconography release exploring street layering aesthetics.