Curator Koyo Kouoh, government director and chief curator of Zeitz Museum of Modern Artwork in Cape City (Zeitz MOCAA), has died on the age of 57. She was tapped to curate the subsequent Venice Biennale, which can open on Might 9, 2026.
Born in Douala, Cameroon, in 1967, Kouoh moved to Switzerland on the age of 13, the place she lived for greater than a decade. In her early 20s, she studied enterprise administration and banking earlier than turning her consideration to writing and modifying. Impressed by Daughters of Africa (1992), an anthology of writing by girls of African descent, she co-edited the German language equal Töchter Afrikas, which was revealed in 1994.
After shifting to Dakar, Kouoh turned concerned in up to date artwork. She served as co-curator, alongside Simon Njami, of the images biennale ‘Bamako Encounters’ in 2001 and 2003, earlier than founding RAW Materials Firm – an artist residency and exhibition area – in 2008. ‘Dakar made me who I’m as we speak,’ Kouoh mentioned in an interview with The Monetary Instances earlier this month. ‘It’s the place I got here of age professionally, the place I actually turned a curator and an exhibition-maker.’
Along with her work at RAW, Kouoh held a number of worldwide roles, together with curatorial advisor for Documenta 12 and 13 (2007 and 2012), and curator of the thirty eighth version of EVA Worldwide in Limerick, Eire, in 2016. Titled Nonetheless (The) Barbarians, the biennale featured greater than 50 artists and explored ‘how we take care of our histories, the imperatives for up to date revolution, and what the long run may maintain,’ wrote Gemma Tipton in her evaluation for frieze.
Kouoh gained international recognition in 2019 when she was appointed to guide Zeitz MOCAA. Extensively credited with turning across the scandal-plagued museum, she constructed ‘an explicitly Pan-African, world-class program’, in line with Roslyn Sulcas for The New York Instances, who profiled the curator in 2023. Whereas at Zeitz MOCAA, she oversaw a number of large-scale travelling exhibitions, together with ‘When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Portray’, at the moment on view at Bozar in Brussels.
In 2024, Kouoh was chosen because the creative director of the 61st Venice Biennale – the primary African lady to carry the place. In an announcement posted on the biennale web site following her passing, the board of administrators praised the ‘ardour, mental rigour and imaginative and prescient’ she dropped at this version’s ‘conceptualisation and improvement’. The presentation of the exhibition’s title and theme was scheduled to happen in Venice on 20 Might.
For the reason that announcement of her dying, there was an outpouring of tributes on social media by artists and humanities professionals. On Instagram, South African artist Candice Breitz described Kouoh as ‘magnificently clever, endlessly energetic and formidably elegant,’ whereas Otobong Nkanga wrote, ‘Kouoh was a supply of heat, generosity and brilliance, she all the time acknowledged that persons are extra essential than issues and we really feel her absence enormously as we speak.’
Predominant picture: Thenjiwe Nkosi, Ceremony (element), 2020, oil on canvas, 1.2 × 1.5 m. Courtesy: the artist
