Death of Koyo Kouoh, avant-garde Swiss-Cameroonian curator

Published on May 11, 2025 at 11:41 a.m.

Koyo Kouoh, who directed Africa's largest contemporary art museum and would have been the first African woman to direct the Venice Biennale, died on May 10, 2025, the Zeitz MOCAA museum announced. She was born in 1967. MARCO LONGARI / AFP

Koyo Kouoh, a Swiss-Cameroonian art curator, died on Saturday, May 10, 2025, at the age of 58. Patron of Africa's largest contemporary art museum, the Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town, South Africa, she was nominated to be the first African woman to direct the Venice Biennale in May 2026.

Swiss-Cameroonian curator Koyo Kouoh, executive director of Africa's largest contemporary art museum and the first African woman appointed to lead the Venice Biennale, died on Saturday, the Zeitz MOCAA museum in Cape Town, South Africa, announced.

Born in 1967 and raised between the coastal city of Douala, Cameroon, and Switzerland, Koyo Kouoh has directed the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) since 2019, and was chosen last year to curate the next Venice Biennale (Italy) – one of the most important contemporary art exhibitions in the world – scheduled for May 2026.

Cross-examinations of contemporary African art

The Zeitz MOCAA "received the news early today of the sudden passing of Koyo Kouoh, our beloved Executive Director and Chief Curator," the museum announced on social media. "As a mark of respect ," the museum's programming is "suspended until further notice," the same source said. In a statement, the Venice Biennale said it was "deeply saddened and dismayed" by the art curator's "sudden and untimely passing."

Only the second African to curate the legendary art exhibition after Nigerian art critic Okwui Enwezor , Koyo Kouoh worked "with passion, intellectual rigor, and vision" on the 2026 edition, the Biennale added. She was due to present the title and theme on May 20 in Venice. "Her passing leaves a huge void in the world of contemporary art," the Biennale said.

The late artist also founded a multidisciplinary art center, RAW Material Company, in Dakar, Senegal. The center paid tribute to her on Saturday, describing her as a "source of warmth, generosity, and genius" who "always said that people are more important than things." Koyo Kouoh placed Zeitz MOCAA at the forefront of contemporary art by promoting Pan-Africanism and artists from the continent and its diaspora.

The question of focusing on African art "didn't even arise," while the discourse on the continent remains largely "defined by others," the curator explained in an interview with AFP in 2023. "Africa is for me an idea that transcends borders. It's a story that transcends borders," she explained. A major exhibition she curated, "When We See Us," on a century of pan-African figurative painting, is currently on view, until August 10, at Bozar in Brussels.

Announcing her appointment to lead the legendary Venetian art exhibition, Biennale president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco praised a "curator, scholar, and influential public figure" who would bring together "the most refined, young, and innovative minds" for the 130-year-old event. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed her "deep sorrow" on Saturday.