Koyo Kouoh, scout of up to date African artwork, has died out | EUROtoday

On May 10, 2025

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“”Art is an extension of ourselves, as a result of our lives are usually not sufficient. »Koyo Kouoh’s sentence, usually pronounced with calm and gravity, sorely resonates this Saturday night. Some nonetheless ask, incredulous: “Koyo is dead?” »» Others learn tributes with out believing it. On the night time of May 9-10, the brutal disappearance of Koyo Kouoh, on the age of 58, after a combating path topped by his appointment in Venice, plunged the world of up to date artwork in stupor.

Visionary exhibition commissioner, a pioneering determine of the African and worldwide creative scene, Koyo Kouoh had been appointed in December 2024 within the course of the 61ᵉ version of the Venice Biennale, whose opening was scheduled for May 2026. His disappearance leaves this orphan version of a girl whose imaginative and prescient promised to mark a turning level.

A shock for Venice and the artwork world

In a press launch imbued with emotion, the Biennale praised a “sudden and premature disappearance” and recalled that the presentation of the title and the theme of this 61ᵉ version, which Koyo Kouoh ready with ardour, was scheduled for May 20. “She worked with passion, rigor and vision […]. His disappearance leaves an immense void in the world of contemporary art and in the international community of artists, curators and researchers who have been able to appreciate his intellectual and human commitment. “The complete establishment” is affectionate with family, friends and all those who shared with it this path of critical thinking and research. »»

The mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, said he was “deeply shocked and saddened” by the news. “His determine was not solely that of an excellent artist and a superb spirit on the worldwide scene, but in addition that of a girl able to listening, of constructing bridges between distant cultures. We had enthusiastically welcomed her appointment, some that she would carry a brand new and artistic imaginative and prescient. »»

An exemplary trajectory on the coronary heart of African and worldwide creative scenes

Born in Douala, Cameroon, Koyo Kouo had left her native nation for Switzerland very early, the place she had began research in administration and finance. But it’s within the artwork world that she’s going to discover her true vocation. In 2008, she based Dakar Raw Material Company, an area for residences and significant reflection which can change into one of the fertile households in modern creation in West Africa.

In 2019, she took the reins of Zeitz Mocaa, in Cape Town, the most important museum of up to date artwork on the African continent. Under its course, the establishment finds a world ambition and a acknowledged curatorial requirement, by highly effective exhibitions akin to When we see us: a century of black figuration in portray Or the retrospective devoted to Tracey Rose.

His tireless dedication to the emergence of a plural creative account, decentralized, led him to take part in a number of worldwide biennials, together with two editions of the Documenta in Kassel. She was not solely a commissioner: she was a pedagogue, strategist, scout. A girl of conviction, to free speech, who has continued to defend the place of African artists on this planet live performance.

To uncover

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Answer

True to her line, she informed her appointment in Venice: “It won’t be an African Biennale. It will probably be a world biennial, as at all times. “To those who saw in her an activist identity, she replied:” My journey is definitely anchored in African house, however I’m a world exhibition curator. »»

His untimely disappearance leaves an immense void on this planet of up to date artwork. But her work continues to irrigate the imaginations. Koyo Kouoh has not solely opened doorways: she redrawn the world artwork card.

Our portrait of Koyo Kouoh

You need to have crossed it to measure the impression of her presence, queen’s tempo, Madone’s face with clear eyes, and this magnificence … But Koyo Kouoh, born in Douala in Cameroon in 1967, grew up in Switzerland, and whose journey started in banking administration earlier than conferences made him department off in the direction of artwork, is above all a head girl. The one who has simply been appointed to steer the following Biennale de Venice, the primary African girl on this place, carries a imaginative and prescient for her native continent. She places down her suitcases in Dakar within the Nineties. A time cultural advisor for the American Embassy in Senegal, she shortly received a affiliate commissioner of an important African creative demonstrations (Biennale de Dakar, Bamako) however it is usually claimed from the Documenta de Kassel. In 2008, it opened a cultural middle which will probably be a date within the current historical past of up to date artwork in Africa: Raw Materia Company (firm of the uncooked materials) – which at this time continues its route with out its founder – is a laboratory of skills, artists, criticisms, curators of exhibitions, bases of an area skilled ecosystem for modern artists. This experience makes its mark, nourishes the boards of the Fair 1-54, London and New York, till it took up the problem, in 2019, to change into director and conservative-in-chief of the Zeitz Mocaa, the most important museum of African modern artwork in CAP in South Africa. Nothing will cease the activist, feminist, pan -Africanist, enthusiastic about creation, in her combat to accompany the artists, inform and invent her continent by them.

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