Karuti’s practice includes experimentation and production across multiple mediums, including drawing, video and performance art. Sharing her thoughts on whether the concept or the medium she uses is an important departure point, Karuti expresses that,

“A fantastic thing about new media is that it has always been about exploration, discovery, subversion and problematizing both critical and technological potentials of itself, such as being time based & durational by collapsing space & time. I do not concern myself with the medium/concept dynamic that still resides within a binary way of thinking and so this dilemma never presents itself. Increasingly I find that it lies within the domain of copy writing and content production where the artist merely pollutes by (over)producing something towards a targeted audience.”

Karuti’s work is founded on ideas around knowledge production & accessibility as well as the depths of possibility enabled by radical imagination. Her thematic considerations often relate to death, sexuality, identity and urban culture. This can be seen in her 2015 exhibition Labyrinth which took place at the Kuona Trust in Nairobi. It unpacked the banality of everyday life and makes visible the never ending maze that most people endure to exist. The explores the journey experienced in trying to escape from this existence of repetition and boredom.

The 2016 exhibition There Are Worlds Out There They Never Told You About which took place at the Goethe Institute in Nairobi and followed on from Labyrinth in an interesting way. This show explored the way in which one can imagine and possibly create an alternative life. It also interrogated topics related to surveillance, borders and displacement. The exhibition featured ten drawings, a watchtower, a fence, an animation video, an installation video and a chalk drawing on the floor resembling that of a dead body. The exhibition was, among other things, the story of a Black man wandering on an island, undersea other-worlds, and a murder of crows that sometimes control satellites. Through this show and the work presented in it viewers are able to see how Karuti masterfully invites imaginings of other worlds while locating her work and our consciousness as viewers in the familiarity of the issues she interrogates.

The animation video of the same name as the exhibition was displayed as part of SOUTH SOUTH’s second edition of VEZA with Circle Art Gallery between 31 March – 10 April. It also appeared as part of SOUTH SOUTH’s film programme at SP-Arte established through the year-long partnership between the platform and the Sao Paulo-based art fair. There Are Worlds Out There They Never Told You About animation is a work in which Karuti explores migration. When asked to share more on the multifaceted references within the video, such as her allusion to the legend of the deep-sea society descended from slaves thrown overboard when travelling from Africa to the Americas, the artist shared that,

“The allusion to this legend together with Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic is sometimes (rightfully) referenced but it has never been mine. I’m cautious tagging work by African/black artists in this way since it risks falling into the afrofuturism trap which I find reductive. The work is a moving image best experienced through multiple perspectives where the planet(s) and movements within it can be tied to surveillance, control as well as ecological & colonial histories.”