Mukhtara Ayọtẹjú Adékúnbi Yusuf (they/them) is a Lagos-based scholar, educator, designer, healer and artist from Ibadan, Nigeria. Mukhtara is the descendant of Yoruba tradeswomen, așǫ oke weavers, onifá, and eleégún. Through practice and theory, warp&weft, writing and design their work highlights the generative qualities of indigenous thinking, story-healing, relations and accessibility.
Mukhtara was most recently a visiting professor at NYU Tandon’s School of Engineering in the Integrated Design and Media program and holds a BA from Dartmouth College, an MA in Communications and Media from UCSD and an MFA in Design from UT Austin. Mukhtara’s courses cover black embodiment and spatial design, racialised trauma, settler colonialism within the African context, and black and indigenous ecologies.
Mukhtara has been an invited speaker at Stanford University, the Blanton Museum, and the Fakugesi Innovation Festival. And has shared the stage with artists such as Questlove of the Roots Crew and DCs Mambo Sauce. Mukhtara has been featured in HBOs Brave New Voices, UNESCOs Women in African History Project, and at the John F Kennedy Center for Performing Arts and was an Enterprise Rose Artist Fellow 2020-2022.
Mukhtara is the founder of ILE an indigenous agricultural healing laboratory based in Ibadan, Nigeria, as well as the organising founder of African Indigenous Soveriegnty. Mukhtara is a signatory of the Design Network Justice Principles and a member of Dark Matter University.