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- Cameroonian curator Koyo Kouoh has handed away after a current most cancers analysis.
- Announcement comes simply 5 months following her appointing and days earlier than presenting of subsequent yr’s theme.
- She is leaving a legacy of elevating African voices in a worldwide creative dialogue.
Koyo Kouoh, the famend curator celebrated for reshaping international views on African up to date artwork, has died unexpectedly on the age of 57 following a current most cancers analysis.
In December 2024, Kouoh was named curator of the 2026 Venice Biennale, poised to develop into the primary African lady to steer the exhibition. Her dying comes simply months after the historic announcement. “Her passing leaves an immense void on this planet of latest artwork,” the Biennale’s organizers mentioned in tribute.
Born in Douala, Cameroon in 1967, Kouoh’s journey into the artwork world started in something however. After transferring to Switzerland as an adolescent, she studied enterprise and banking earlier than transitioning to social work, the place she started helping migrant ladies – a path that deepened her dedication to cultural expression and social change, ultimately main her to working within the arts.
Kouoh later left Europe, making Dakar, Senegal her new dwelling. In 2008, she launched Uncooked Materials Firm, an impartial artist residency, exhibition house and artwork academy centered on West African creativity and a region-first method. In a current assertion, RAW crew described Kouoh as “an actual drive, a supply of heat, generosity and intelligence [who] at all times affirmed that folks had been extra necessary than issues.”
Kouoh’s influence was deeply felt throughout the continent and past. In 2019, she took the helm of Zeitz MOCAA in Cape City as govt director and chief curator, revitalizing the museum’s path; and all through her profession, she has additionally contributed to main worldwide artwork platforms together with Documenta, the Carnegie Worldwide and the 1-54 Up to date African Artwork Honest. Her landmark 2022 exhibition, When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Portray, is at the moment on view in Brussels.
Tireless in her mission of nurturing the establishments she constructed and elevating African voices in a worldwide dialogue, her legacy is deeply felt inside the creative cloth of the previous, current and future.
