Magazine article
Like a Goya of Google, artist Jon Rafman fixates on the internet’s perverse pleasures
The Conversation
08/09/2026
Appears in Recent Faculty of Education Publications
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Abstract
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.
Details
- Title
- Like a Goya of Google, artist Jon Rafman fixates on the internet’s perverse pleasures
- Creators
- Wes Hill - Southern Cross University
- Publication Details
- The Conversation
- Publisher
- The Conversation Media Group Ltd
- Identifiers
- 991013398671602368
- Academic Unit
- Faculty of Education
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Magazine article