Koyo Kouoh is one of the world’s most prominent figures in the art world, and she is scheduled to die on Saturday in the city of Basel, Switzerland. She is 57 years old.
The organizers of the Biennale announced her death, announced in the hospital. Her husband, Philippe Mall, said the cause was cancer diagnosed recently.
The Biennale said Ms. Kuo’s “sudden and out of place” death came days before she planned to announce the title and theme of next year’s event. The statement added that her death “leaved a huge gap in the contemporary art world.”
The Venice Biennale can be said to be the most important event in the art world. It has been staged every two years since 1895, always including large group performances organized by curators and independently organizing dozens of national exhibitions.
A spokeswoman for the Biennale did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the significance of Ms. Kouoh’s death on the exhibition, which is scheduled to take place from May 9 to November 22.
As curator and executive director of Zeitz Mocaa in Cape Town, Ms. Kouoh is one of the largest museums of contemporary art in Africa and, despite her interests around the world, Ms. Kouoh has earned a global reputation. “I am an international curator,” she said in an interview with The New York Times in December.
When Ms. Kouoh arrived at Zeitz Mocaa in 2019, the museum was struggling, run by interim director Azu Nwagbogu. Its founding director Mark Coetzee resigned amid allegations that he was harassing his staff.
“The museum was in crisis when Koyo encountered a pandemic,” Storm Janse van Renseburg, then a senior curator at Zeitz Mocaa, said in an interview in 2023. “She brought it to life back.”
Artist Igshaan Adams, who held a residency position at the museum for eight months while Ms. Kouoh’s tenure, said she changed the local community’s feelings about Zeitz Mocaa. “She made me care about the museum again,” he said. Mr. Adams said this was the first time he had a real public engagement with someone who looked like me and spoke like me. ”
Ms. Kouoh often said in interviews that she never expected to be a figure in the art world. She was born on December 24, 1967 in Douala, Cameroon, the country’s largest city and economic capital, where she grew up, then moved to Switzerland at the age of 13, where she eventually studied business administration and banking and worked as a social worker with immigrant women.
The turning point in her career was in her 20s, when she became a mother. “I can’t imagine raising a black boy in Europe,” Ms. Kuo said in an interview in 2023. In 1995, she moved to Dakar, Senegal, to “exploring new boundaries and spaces”, and after a few years as an independent curator, she founded raw materials, later a program for artists’ residency, which later expanded to include exhibition spaces, libraries and a college that provides mentoring programs for young art professionals.
“I think she is not only a curator, but an institution builder,” said Oluremi C. Onabanjo, deputy curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, in a 2023 interview. “A global thinker rooted in Africa,” she added, Ms. Kouoh “has added possibilities to a global generation of African curators.”
Ms. Kuo’s residence in Dakar has expanded her reputation as a powerful, visionary voice in the contemporary art world. She works on the curatorial teams of Documenta 12 and 13 and has curated educational and art programs for 1-54 contemporary African art fairs, the Irish Contemporary Art Biennale 2016 and other international exhibitions.
Touria El Glaoui, founding director of 1-54, said in an interview that Ms. Kuo was “the most important artist curator on the continent”, adding: “She made a voice to many talents.”
In an interview in 2023, Ms. Kouoh said she initially refused the idea of serving as director of Zeitz Mocaa. But after a conversation with a black colleague, she said: “It feels like we can’t let this fail. We don’t have anything like that on the mainland.”
Throughout her career, Ms. Kouoh worked hard to bring African artists to a world that had long been overlooking them or typing. “I am part of that generation of African art professionals who are proud and knowledgeable about the beauty of African culture, which is often defined by others in many wrong ways,” she said in the same interview.
“I don’t believe we need to take the time to correct these narratives,” she added. “We need to engrave other perspectives.”
In addition to the shopping mall, Ms. Kuo is survived by her son Djibril Schmed. Her mother, Agnes Steidl; and her stepfather, Anton Steidl.
Ms. Kouoh is a mentor to artists and curators around the world, “embracing people and ideas that she knows are important,” said Kate Fowle, director of the Art Program at the Hearstland Art Foundation, a supportive organization that was founded in 2019 by Kate Capshaw and Steven Capshaw and Steven Spielberg.
She was appointed curator of the 2026 Venice Biennale and was popular among the art world. “She deserves it,” said Adrienne Edwards, senior curator and deputy director of the Curator Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. She added that it was Ms. Kuo’s “unique ability to take root in a location where her own artists – her moral roots – profound and especially composition of her exhibition.”
Speaking to The Times after the appointment announced, Ms. Kuo said she wanted to create a show that “really speaks to our times”, adding that she is an artist-centric curator. “Artists will define where we go,” she said.
