Koyo Kouoh, 1967–2025
By Karen May Wai Plumptre
Portrait of KOYO KOUOH. Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia.
On May 10, celebrated Cameroonian-born curator Koyo Kouoh, who was selected to lead next year’s Venice Biennale, passed away in Basel, Switzerland, at the age of 57. According to her husband, Philippe Mall, her death was caused by a recently diagnosed cancer.
A world-renowned, trailblazing advocate for African creatives whose work interrogated questions of power, identity, as well as the lingering impact of colonialism, Kouoh was at the height of her career. Last December, she was appointed as the first African woman to curate the 61st Venice Biennale, making her the first African-born woman to helm the art world’s longest-running mega event. Kouoh was also the chief curator and executive director of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town, South Africa, the largest institution for contemporary African art.
Born in 1967 in Douala, Kouoh moved to Zurich at 13 years old. Although she later earned a degree in business administration and banking, she veered away from the world of finance to instead become a social worker, mostly helping migrant women. In her 20s, she pivoted to studying cultural management in France to pursue her passion for art and writing.
Kouoh returned to Africa in 1996, settling in Dakar, Senegal, where she dedicated herself to creative endeavors. In a 2016 interview with Artforum, she expressed her desire to incite and engage in discussions about art “the way I think it should be discussed—which is to say, in an analytic and social way.” For several years, she worked as an independent curator before founding Raw Material Company in 2008, an art center and residential program in the Senegalese capital that has become an influential platform for African and African diasporic contemporary artists. In a statement published on May 10, Raw Material Company described Kouoh as “a real force, a source of warmth, generosity and intelligence, [who] always affirmed that people were more important than things.”
In 2019, Kouoh joined Zeitz MOCAA as its new director. She saw her appointment as an opportunity to create a Pan-African institution, where the nuanced histories and futures of the continent could be explored with fervent dialogues and care.
Kouoh garnered international acclaim after co-curating the 2001 and 2003 editions of Bamako Encounters – The African Biennial of Photography in Mali. She also served on the curatorial teams of Documenta 12 (2007) and Documenta 13 (2012), and worked as the inaugural curator for the educational and artistic program of the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair (2013); and the Irish Contemporary Art Biennale (2016).
Just days before her passing, Koyo had submitted her proposed theme and title for the upcoming Venice Biennale, which is slated to open on May 9 next year. Further arrangements regarding the event have not yet been announced.
Karen May Wai Plumptre is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.
