The artist behind the collections
Munira
Yussuf
Visual artist & illustrator
Profile No. 01
Portrait of an artist
Building the images she once searched for.
Munira Yussuf is a Sweden-based visual artist and illustrator whose practice grew through drawing, digital experimentation and self-directed study. She began working independently in 2012 and has since developed a visual language recognised for colour, presence and storytelling.
Women sit at the centre of her world—especially Black and Muslim women, portrayed not as symbols at the edge of someone else’s narrative, but as complex protagonists with elegance, humour, softness and power.
The visual language
Representation, without reduction.
Her early work was shaped by an absence: too few images reflected the lives, beauty and interiority of women who looked like her. The answer was not simply to add new figures to familiar scenes, but to construct an entire visual world around them.
Pattern, saturated colour, ornament and quiet gesture become tools for reclaiming space. The image can be intimate or monumental, playful or political—but it remains unmistakably hers.
The work begins with identity, but it opens into something universal: the desire to be seen fully.
Maison Gatta · Artist profileSelected chronology
A practice built outside the expected path.
The independent practice begins
Digital illustration becomes a serious, self-directed discipline—shaped by curiosity, repetition and an instinct for visual communication.
A wider conversation
Work centred on Black and Muslim women reaches international editorial audiences, while the practice expands into exhibitions and cultural spaces.
Storytelling through commission
Selected projects include visual work for cultural and social-impact organisations, translating layered themes into clear, memorable images.
Maison Gatta
The archive evolves into a wider maison: art conceived not only as an image, but as a presence within interiors, objects and everyday life.
The visual archive
Women, colour & interior worlds.
A selection of pieces shown in the environments they were imagined to transform.
Beyond the frame
Selected fields of work.
Munira’s practice moves between personal art and commissioned storytelling, retaining the same clarity of voice across every format.
Culture & theatre
Illustration developed for performance, identity-led storytelling and public cultural work.
Selected collaboration · RiksteaternGlobal justice
Complex social themes translated into approachable visual narratives and animated pieces.
Selected collaboration · DiakoniaFeminist futures
Expansive visual systems created around community, movement, imagination and change.
Selected collaboration · FRIDAEditorial & exhibition
Work presented through magazines, digital publications and collective art spaces.
Selected recognition · PAPER / AFROPUNK / Konstfack
One archive, many chapters
The line continues.
Across abstraction, portraiture and imagined landscapes, the constant is a belief that art can change how a person experiences a room—and how a person experiences being seen.
Return to the Atelier
Printed Works
Maison Textiles
Objects for Living
The Gatta Interior
Maison Ivoire
Les Femmes de Gatta
Les Filles de la Côte