Jon Rafman (Canadian, b. 1981) is a video and installation artist who mines the internet for user-generated images, video clips and screenshots to explore how digital media reshapes identity, memory and behavior. He studied philosophy and literature at McGill University in Montreal before earning an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and lives and works in Montreal.
He first gained attention for 9 Eyes, a project that curates uncanny, unplanned images captured by Google Street View's camera cars into a body of art. Between 2013 and 2015 he made a trilogy of videos — Still Life (Betamale), Mainsqueeze and Erysichthon — that explore internet subcultures through user-created content, with Erysichthon premiering at the 13th Biennale de Lyon. In 2015 the Zabludowicz Collection in London gave him his first major UK solo show, staging his videos inside sets including a ball-pit hot tub and a padded “squeeze chair” so viewers could watch them in immersive physical settings. The show included Sticky Drama (2015), his first feature-style film, made with Warp Records and musician Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never) and shot with more than 35 London children acting out a live-action-roleplay fantasy.
