Koyo Kouoh (24 December 1967 – 10 May 2025) was a Cameroonian-Swiss curator who served as Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town from 2019 onwards. In 2015, the New York Times called her “one of Africa’s pre-eminent art curators and managers”, and from 2014 to 2022, she was annually named one of the 100 most influential people in the contemporary art world by ArtReview.
Kouoh was raised in Cameroon and later Switzerland. As an adult, she moved to Dakar to build an art career, working as an independent curator and founding an artist’s residency and exhibition space, the RAW Material Company. In 2019, she was appointed the director of the recently opened Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa. She was appointed to serve as the 2026 Venice Biennale’s artistic director until her sudden death in May 2025.
Early life and education
Koyo Kouoh was born on 24 December 1967, in Douala, Cameroon. She lived in Douala until the age of thirteen, and moved with her family to Zurich, Switzerland, where she stayed for the next decade and a half. She studied business administration and banking in Switzerland as well as cultural management in France. She was fluent in French, German, English, and Italian.
In 1994, Kouoh co-edited Töchter Afrikas, a German-language companion to Margaret Busby’s Daughters of Africa and a collection of writings by women of the African diaspora. The following year, she travelled to Dakar, Senegal, to interview filmmaker Ousmane Sembène. After encountering the city’s art scene, including meeting painter Issa Samb, and frustrated with anti-black racism in Europe, Kouoh decided to move to Dakar and pursue an art-related career.
Curatorial career
Kouoh initially worked as a cultural officer for the U.S. Consulate and as an independent curator. In 2000, she met South African artist Tracey Rose and Nigerian-Belgian artist Otobong Nkanga, both whom Kouoh would feature in many future exhibitions. In 2001 and 2003, Kouoh served as co-curator – alongside writer Simon Njami – on Les Rencontres de la Photographie Africaine in Bamako, a photography biennial held in Mali.
From 2008 until 2019, Kouoh served as the founding artistic director of RAW Material Company, a Dakar artist’s residency, exhibition space, and academy. Over the following decade, RAW built a reputation for quality exhibitions and became a respected cultural centre. In 2014, the group faced controversy for an exhibition titled Personal Liberties, which included LGBT stories. When local Muslim leaders protested and the RAW building was vandalized, RAW decided to cancel the show.
Kouoh served as curatorial adviser for Documenta 12 (2007) and 13 (2012) and the EVA International (Republic of Ireland’s biennial of contemporary art) in 2016. For the latter, she organized a show based on postcolonial themes, in part to celebrate the centenary of the Easter Rising. The exhibition’s title, Still (the) Barbarians, referenced the poem Waiting for the Barbarians by Greek author Constantine P. Cavafy. It included artists such as Kader Attia, Liam Gillick, Abdoulaye Konaté, Alice Maher, and Tracey Rose. Art critic Niamh NicGhabhann described it as “[engaging] in an elegant, assured, often furious debate with the ideas of 1916”.
In 2014, Kouoh was the curator of the education programme at 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London and helped to reform the Dakar Biennale. She was on the search committee that chose the Polish curator Adam Szymczyk as artistic director for documenta 14 in 2017. In December 2024, she was appointed curator of the 61st Venice Art Biennale, opening in spring 2026.
Zeitz MOCAA
The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, South Africa—the African continent’s largest museum—opened in 2017, built around the art collection of philanthropist Jochen Zeitz. However, the following year, its director, Mark Coetzee, was suspended following accusations of sexual harassment. Kouoh was appointed his replacement as executive director and chief curator in 2019.
At the time of Kouoh’s arrival, according to one newspaper report, “morale was low and exhibitions lackluster.” Over the next year, Kouoh expanded the curatorial team and the board of trustees, as well as adding artist residency programs. After a COVID-19-related closure, the museum re-opened to much greater audiences. In her curation, Kouoh emphasized solo retrospectives and believed that it is the most effective way to tell artists’ stories. Retrospectives she organized include Mary Evans, Tracey Rose, and Johannes Phokela. The Rose retrospective also toured to the Queens Museum, where a New York Times reviewer described it as dealing with “post-colonial complexities, such as repatriation, recompense and reckoning.”
Kouoh was part of the jury that selected Shu Lea Cheang as recipient of the LG Guggenheim Award in 2024.
Kouoh died suddenly in the early hours of 10 May 2025 in Switzerland at the age of 57, with the cause of death undisclosed. She was set to serve as the director of the 2026 Venice Biennale.
