Like a Goya of Google, artist Jon Rafman fixates on the internet’s perverse pleasures

By Wes Hill, Associate Professor, Art History and Visual Culture, Southern Cross University

Jon Rafman is a master of turning the internet’s trash, excess and alienation into strangely seductive art.

Memento Hikikomori is his intoxicating mini-retrospective at Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art (IMA).

It combines two ideas: memento mori, the reminder of our mortality, and hikikomori, the Japanese term associated with extreme social withdrawal.

The combination suits Rafman. His works repeatedly depict people retreating from the physical world into digital ones, finding traces of a questionable humanity behind the pixels.

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Like a Goya of Google, artist Jon Rafman fixates on the internet’s perverse pleasures

Flâneur of the fringe…Read complete article© The Conversation - Tuesday, September 8, 2026

Flâneur of the fringe…

Read complete article
© The Conversation - Tuesday, September 8, 2026