Catalogue > At random

There are worlds out there they never told you about, 2017 is a video that is part of a larger body of work under the same title. While rightfully addressing tragic stories of migration through water, the work viewed collectively through drawings and new media is also about reimagining freedom through the imagination and creation of fantastic worlds. Worlds that are less about occupying physical space but more about cultivating ways that one can be free in a place where home and freedom remain elusive.

Jackie Karuti is an artist based in Nairobi. Her practice is largely experimental and employs the use of new media through drawings, video, installations and performance art. Her work is founded on ideas around knowledge production & accessibility as well as the depths of possibility enabled by radical imagination. Karuti is the 2017 recipient of the Young Artist Award at the Cape Town Art Fair, an alumna of the Gasworks residency program in London as well as Asìko, a roaming Pan African art school designed to redress the frequently outdated or non-existent artistic and curatorial curricula at tertiary institutions across Africa. In 2017 she was shortlisted for the residency program at The Rijksakademie. Karuti has participated in several exhibitions & residencies, both locally & abroad as well as multidisciplinary projects such as curating the Out Film Festival-Nairobi (2016-2018). In 2017 she established the online platform, I’ve Been Working on Some MAGIC which seeks to engage Nairobi based visual artists in critical writing, collective curatorial projects as well as sharing audiovisual material. In 2018 Karuti’s work will debut at the 13th edition of the Dak’Art Biennial in Dakar, Senegal.