Koyo Kouoh was suddenly announced as curator of the 2026 Venice Biennale on May 10 and his sudden death on May 10 shocked the organization and the art community as a whole. Kouoh will be the first African woman to curate a biennial, and his husband Philippe Mall revealed that he died just aged 57 in the recent cancer found, just a few days after she was scheduled to be on the title and theme of next year’s edition.
Since her appointment, the internationally renowned curator has apparently taken a step back from the public eye with few statements or interviews – perhaps something is wrong. Her death, just one year before the most important and complex exhibition in the art world, raised urgent questions about the future of the event. Is the Biennale postponed? Or pushing kouoh’s vision in less than twelve months (or hastily conceived a brand new curator)?
As the Biennale organization is currently focusing on the opening of the Venice Architecture Biennale in the second half of last week, there has been no commentary on how Cuo’s death will affect the 2026 exhibition, which is still scheduled to open on May 9, 2026 as of now.
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Cameroonian curators have established a career with international acclaim, marked by institutional transformation and landmark exhibitions. When she joined the Zeitz Mocaa in Cape Town as director and chief curator, the museum was driving financial and strategic uncertainty; under her leadership, its programming and global relevance were strongly restored. Kouoh’s life and career spanned Cape Town, Dakar and Basel, contributing to organized key exhibitions including “Stationary (Barsman” in Kassel’s Document Nos. 12 and 13 and organized key exhibitions. She also curated the art program of the first Modern African Art Fair in London 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, and she led the landmark 2022/2024 exhibition “When We See Us: Black Images in Painting”, which is the largest and most comprehensive exploration of black self-seat, cultural expression and history to make her role fit her champion and abide by the champion monk who has the role of artists.
In 2008, Kouoh co-founded Raw Materials Company, a Dakar-based arts center that focuses on curatorial practices and art criticism, which remains an important force in supporting the local art ecosystem through participation in literature, film, fashion and architecture. In addition to institutional leadership, she played a key role in framing and developing careers of artists such as Abdoulaye Konaté, Otobong Nkanga, Johannes Phokela and Tracey Rose, who curated the first major monograph for them.
It is worth noting that Kouoh once said that she never thought she would become a figure in the art world. Born in Douala, Cameroonian Economic Capital, she moved to Switzerland at the age of 13 and initially studied business management and banking. Despite seemingly expected to pursue a career in Credit Suisse, she began working with immigrant women as social workers. Her commitment to cultural expression and social change deepened after her return to Africa, and she coordinated cultural programs at the Gorée Institute in Senegal from 1998 to 2002, thus launching a curatorial career.
Raw Materials Company was originally a mobile platform for key communications and artistic practices and established a permanent space in Midtown Dakar in 2011. The center continues to serve as an interface for interdisciplinary interactions, interdisciplinary, literature, architecture, fashion and film.
Throughout his career, Kouoh remains committed to eliminating the reductive narrative surrounding African art. She advocates a global perspective from a geographical or cultural essentialism shackled. “I have gone beyond the idea of Africa as a geographical region and viewed it as a way of thinking that can make it a psychological space where people interested in African ideas can live in,” she said in an interview with Ocula in 2014. Although her interests have never been restricted by nationality, she has a profound responsibility for things related to Africa.
This mentality emphasizes her curatorial approach: a kind of rooted in nuance, complexity, and transnational dialogue. The framework is expected to influence her vision for the 61st Venice Biennale, which will unfold in the context of a global transformation, namely the binary of the north and south of the world. In a press statement, the Biennale described her death as “a huge gap left in the contemporary world of art and in the international community of artists, curators and scholars who have the honor of understanding and appreciation of her extraordinary human and intellectual commitment.”
