Isaac Kariuki

Elena Sarigeorgiou
Apr 24
2 min read

Weaponise the Internet (2015)

Close-up portrait of a hijabi figure in military-style clothing with neon goggles and a smartphone, set against a bright green background suggesting a digital world

Close Looking: Queer African Art and Futures

Visual description:

This close-up portrait shows a young hijabi looking off to the right with a smartphone pressed to her ear. In Weaponise the Internet, Isaac Kariuki places the figure against a flat lime-green background that immediately suggests a digital or virtual setting.

She wears a dark olive-green hijab layered beneath a heavy, hooded military-style parka in a matching tone. Several small enamel pins are attached to the jacket, including one with a yellow smiley face. Bright neon-yellow tactical goggles rest on her forehead, reflecting lines of computer code.

The image blurs the boundaries between the physical and digital. The figure seems suspended in an undefined space, focused on multiple screens at once. Her face is partially enclosed by hoods and technology, creating a sense of isolation, concealment, and control.

Context:

Kariuki has described the work as part of “an imagined Hijabi hacker collective,” asking us to consider what it might mean for people to disrupt oppressive structures for their own betterment.

This idea emerges from the double-edged nature of technology. Across Africa, social media has been used to share lived experience, mobilize communities, and challenge power. At the same time, governments have often shut down internet access and restricted digital communication during elections and periods of unrest.

The work asks what it might look like for people to use that same digital space in acts of resistance. It is also useful to note that the color green carries important associations in Islam, often linked to purity and Paradise. That symbolic meaning adds another layer to the image’s visual language.

Interpretation:

As media theorist Marshall McLuhan observed, “The medium is the message.” Kariuki’s work reflects this idea by showing how visibility is increasingly shaped through technology, connectivity, and mediated identity.

The figure appears to exist in a liminal state, suspended within a green digital vacuum where the body is both present and decontextualized. The internet becomes a kind of third space, where reality, strategy, and self-presentation intersect.

The title Weaponise the Internet suggests both aggression and reclamation. It marks a shift from passive use to active intervention. The presence of a hijabi hacker also unsettles familiar assumptions about youth culture, technology, and who is imagined to hold power in virtual space.

The visual language reinforces this reading. Olive military tones, neon goggles, and the stateless digital background suggest camouflage, simulation, and strategic self-fashioning. Read this way, the figure becomes someone recoding herself as she reclaims both the internet and the future.

Reflect and Explore

How does the combination of the hijab and military-style clothing reshape your idea of what a hacker looks like or does?
How does the smiley-face pin alter the otherwise serious, high-stakes visual language of the work?
How does your own relationship to your phone change when you think about “weaponizing” it for autonomy or resistance?