Rachel Ní Mhurchú

I am a multimedia artist based in Dublin whose practice investigates visual culture as shaped by and experienced through the internet. Using both traditional and digital media, I reflect on the increasingly blurred boundary between physical and digital spaces.

Free to Use takes its title from a phrase commonly included in the online descriptions of “anime bases”: a type of digital fashion doll intended to be downloaded and altered by internet users. The title gestures towards both the objectification of the female form and the adaptability of the anime base itself. Here, the base occupies the role of the classical female nude, presenting a site of potentiality rather than a fixed or regulated depiction of the body.

Through audio and video, the works engage in a self-referential dialogue, discussing their status as images alongside the simultaneous demands and restrictions placed upon their personhood.