Death of Koyo Kouoh: Contemporary African art loses its direction

In December 2024, she was appointed curator of international exhibitions for the 61st Venice Art Biennale, scheduled to open on May 9, 2026. She had begun working on it, "as a visionary, with passion and rigor," the Biennale emphasized in a press release issued Saturday, May 10, to announce her "sudden and premature" death, which occurred "in the morning." Koyo Kouoh was 57 years old and appeared as a leading figure to change the course of modern and contemporary art, which had long been too ignorant of creators from minorities, particularly Black people.

Born in Douala, Cameroon, she grew up in Switzerland from the age of 13. There she studied to pursue careers in banking and business. Before leaving everything for Dakar, where she founded Raw Material, an art center that bends over backwards to conduct curatorial, educational, social, theoretical, and critical programs, not to mention artist residencies... In other words, a bundle of activities and reflection aimed at making art the heart of a reactor fueling local development. An approach that is anything but