Koyo Kouoh, Pan-African curator and director of Zeitz Mocaa, 1967-2025

Koyo Kouoh, curator and director of Zeitz Mocaa in Cape Town, and artistic director of the next Venice Biennial, has died.

Zeitz Mocaa received news from his “sudden passage” at the “early hours” of the morning of May 10, as indicated in a post on Instagram.

Kouoh was to lead the 61st Biennale of Venice, which should open its doors in April 2026. The Biennale wrote in a press release “ its passage leaves an immense void in the world of contemporary art and in the international community of artists, commissioners and scholars who have had the privilege of knowing and admiring its extraordinary human and intellectual commitment. ”

A leading figure in the promotion of Pan -Africanism throughout art, Kouoh was executive and chief conservative director of Zeitz since 2019, after having established his name through the Société de Ravières in Senegal.

Born in Douala, Cameroon, her family moved to Zurich, Switzerland, at the age of 13. Although she initially studied business administration and banking services in Switzerland, maternity has inspired a return to Africa, choosing Dakar as a new house. Working first as a cultural officer for the American consulate in 2008, she founded raw materials.

Kouoh also participated in the Documenta 12 (2007) and Documenta 13 (2012) conservation teams. In 2013, she launched the educational and artistic program of the contemporary African art fair of 1:54, and in 2016 organized Eva International, the Biennale in Limerick, Ireland.

Among his exhibitions in Zeitz When we see ourselves: a century of black figuration in paintingwhich brought together 156 artists from Africa and its diaspora and who traveled internationally, as well as solos for Tracey Rose, Johannes Phokela and Mary Evans

In a tribute to Kouoh, the artist Otobong Nkanga wrote: “Koyo was a source of heat, generosity and radiance, she always said that people are more important than things and we feel her absence a lot today.

More information to follow.