Koyo Kouoh, Cameroonian-Swiss curator and a major figure in contemporary art, known for championing African artists and curating groundbreaking exhibitions has died after a long illness at the age of 57. She was the Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town, South Africa, and was set to curate the 2026 Venice Biennale—making her the first African woman to hold that role.
The president of the Venice Biennale, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, who in December 2024 appointed her curator of the 61st International Art Exhibition, scheduled for 2026, welcomed her saying,“With her we confirm what the Biennale has upheld for more than a century: to be the home of the future.”
A Cameroonian but raised in Switzerland, Kouoh represented an innovative approach to art, with a forward-looking vision and a focus on opening up to new cultural horizons, from both a pan-African and international perspective.
She lived and worked between Cape Town, Dakar and Basel. Throughout her career, she organized numerous exhibitions, many of them dedicated to the world of women, such as Body Talk: Feminism, Sexuality and the Body in the Works of Six African Women Artists, first presented in Brussels in 2015. She was also curator of Still (the) Barbarians, the 37th EVA International, the Irish art biennial, in 2016, and participated in the 57th Carnegie International in Pittsburgh.
From 2013 to 2017 she curated the program of 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, the first and only international fair entirely dedicated to contemporary African art, with venues in London and New York. At Zeitz MOCAA she curated solo exhibitions of African artists, working with Otobong Nkanga, Johannes Phokela, Senzeni Marasela, Abdoulaye Konaté, Tracey Rose, and Mary Evans. In 2020 she received the Grand Prix Meret Oppenheim, a prestigious Swiss award that honors outstanding figures in the fields of art, architecture, criticism and exhibitions.
“She leaves an immense void in the contemporary art world and in the global community of artists, curators and scholars, who appreciated her extraordinary intellectual and human commitment,” says the cultural institution of Ca’ Giustinian in Venice.
Buttafuoco told the media that Kouoh had said she was honored by the assignment and eager to create an exhibition “that could have meaning for the world we live in today and, above all, for the world we want to build.” Buttafuoco recalled her saying that ”artists are the visionaries and social scientists who allow us to think and project ideas in ways that only this profession allows.”
