Lushsux

2015artist / meme mural seriessemi-active

Published September 5, 2026

Lushsux is a Melbourne street artist who paints huge murals riffing on internet memes and current-events controversies. His work first broke onto meme feeds in late 2015 with a giant Pepe the Frog piece, then went global in 2016 after a stars-and-stripes monokini mural of Hillary Clinton got his Instagram deleted and sparked international press coverage.

street art memesmeme celebrity memesplatform censorship memesaustralian memesmid 2010s memes

Overview

Lushsux is an anonymous Melbourne-based street artist whose signature move is painting huge, photorealistic walls of internet memes, celebrities and news-cycle characters, then documenting them on Instagram2. The murals mix graffiti technique with the fast turnover of meme feeds, so a piece can go up, get photographed, spread across Twitter and Instagram, and be painted over within days1.

His best-known runs cover Pepe the Frog, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and rapper 50 Cent, usually built around a photoshop or image macro already circulating online rather than an original composition3. That approach is what made him a fixture of meme-news coverage: the mural is a physical remix of a joke that already exists on the timeline, which loops the wall back onto the feeds it came from.

Origin & Background

Platform
Instagram (mural photos) / news press (viral spread)
Creator
Lushsux
Date
2015

Lushsux had been active on social media for years before the meme murals, with the @Lushsux Twitter account created in June 2011 4 and an Instagram feed following in July 2014 that initially showed murals painted on the sides of trucks 3. A Facebook page went up on December 9 and gathered tens of thousands of likes over the following years 2.

The first properly meme-themed mural was posted to his Instagram on October 16, 2015, featuring Pepe the Frog3. Less than two weeks later, on October 29, 2015, he posted a Why the Fuck You Lyin' mural6, setting the template of taking a currently viral image and repainting it at wall scale.

How It Spread

Lushsux broke out of the graffiti scene and into mainstream news on July 24, 2016, when he posted a mural of Hillary Clinton in a stars-and-stripes monokini, based on a photoshop that had been circulating online1. That week Instagram disabled his account, which at the time had around 107,000 followers, and Lushsux publicly blamed the takedown on the Clinton piece1. The Daily Mail interviewed him on July 28, 2016, where he argued Instagram and Facebook applied their rules unevenly and pointed out he had painted Trump murals with no problems1.

He kept trolling the story forward. On August 1, 2016, he repainted the Clinton mural with the figure fully covered in a burqa, turning the censorship row into its own follow-up post3. Fashion and culture site Hypebeast ran an interview on August 10, 20161. Around the same time he traveled to the West Bank and painted a piece on Israel's separation wall in Bethlehem based on an image macro of Donald Trump touching the Western Wall, with the thought bubble I'm going to build you a brother5.

Later work included a rolling series of 50 Cent murals, built from photoshops by graphic designer Mister Morris and others that crossed the rapper with various memes and celebrities. The rapper's own surprised reactions to each new wall pushed the series across Instagram, with Lushsux eventually declaring a 50 Cent month5.

How to Use This Meme

Lushsux is a person rather than a template, so there is no format to remix. When people reference him online it is typically by sharing a photo of one of his murals, tagging @lushsux, or citing him as an example when a mural of a viral image shows up in the news. If you want to follow the work, the Instagram feed is the main channel, since the walls themselves often get painted over quickly3.

Frequently Asked Questions

Lushsux

2015artist / meme mural seriessemi-active

Published September 5, 2026

Lushsux is a Melbourne street artist who paints huge murals riffing on internet memes and current-events controversies. His work first broke onto meme feeds in late 2015 with a giant Pepe the Frog piece, then went global in 2016 after a stars-and-stripes monokini mural of Hillary Clinton got his Instagram deleted and sparked international press coverage.

street art memes meme celebrity memes platform censorship memes australian memes mid 2010s memes

Overview

Lushsux is an anonymous Melbourne-based street artist whose signature move is painting huge, photorealistic walls of internet memes, celebrities and news-cycle characters, then documenting them on Instagram2. The murals mix graffiti technique with the fast turnover of meme feeds, so a piece can go up, get photographed, spread across Twitter and Instagram, and be painted over within days1.

His best-known runs cover Pepe the Frog, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and rapper 50 Cent, usually built around a photoshop or image macro already circulating online rather than an original composition3. That approach is what made him a fixture of meme-news coverage: the mural is a physical remix of a joke that already exists on the timeline, which loops the wall back onto the feeds it came from.

Origin & Background

Platform
Instagram (mural photos) / news press (viral spread)
Creator
Lushsux
Date
2015

Lushsux had been active on social media for years before the meme murals, with the @Lushsux Twitter account created in June 2011 4 and an Instagram feed following in July 2014 that initially showed murals painted on the sides of trucks 3. A Facebook page went up on December 9 and gathered tens of thousands of likes over the following years 2.

The first properly meme-themed mural was posted to his Instagram on October 16, 2015, featuring Pepe the Frog3. Less than two weeks later, on October 29, 2015, he posted a Why the Fuck You Lyin' mural6, setting the template of taking a currently viral image and repainting it at wall scale.

How It Spread

Lushsux broke out of the graffiti scene and into mainstream news on July 24, 2016, when he posted a mural of Hillary Clinton in a stars-and-stripes monokini, based on a photoshop that had been circulating online1. That week Instagram disabled his account, which at the time had around 107,000 followers, and Lushsux publicly blamed the takedown on the Clinton piece1. The Daily Mail interviewed him on July 28, 2016, where he argued Instagram and Facebook applied their rules unevenly and pointed out he had painted Trump murals with no problems1.

He kept trolling the story forward. On August 1, 2016, he repainted the Clinton mural with the figure fully covered in a burqa, turning the censorship row into its own follow-up post3. Fashion and culture site Hypebeast ran an interview on August 10, 20161. Around the same time he traveled to the West Bank and painted a piece on Israel's separation wall in Bethlehem based on an image macro of Donald Trump touching the Western Wall, with the thought bubble I'm going to build you a brother5.

Later work included a rolling series of 50 Cent murals, built from photoshops by graphic designer Mister Morris and others that crossed the rapper with various memes and celebrities. The rapper's own surprised reactions to each new wall pushed the series across Instagram, with Lushsux eventually declaring a 50 Cent month5.

How to Use This Meme

Lushsux is a person rather than a template, so there is no format to remix. When people reference him online it is typically by sharing a photo of one of his murals, tagging @lushsux, or citing him as an example when a mural of a viral image shows up in the news. If you want to follow the work, the Instagram feed is the main channel, since the walls themselves often get painted over quickly3.

Frequently Asked Questions