Koyo Kouoh will curate the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026. | Photograph by Mirjam Kluka, Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia
Koyo Kouoh is first Black woman and second African-born curator to organize Venice Biennale in international exhibition’s 130-year history
THE NEXT ARTISTIC DIRECTOR of the Venice Biennale is Koyo Kouoh. She will curate the international exhibition in 2026. Born in Cameroon, Kouoh is an influential curator who has organized exhibitions around the world. She currently serves as executive director and chief curator of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town, South Africa, one of the most prominent museums on the continent. News that Kouoh will organize the 61st Venice Biennale was announced Dec. 3.
“The appointment of Koyo Kouoh as the director of the Visual Arts Sector is the acknowledgment of a broad horizon of vision at the dawn of a day profuse with new words and eyes,” La Biennale di Venezia President Pietrangelo Buttafuoco said in a statement.
“Her perspective as a curator, scholar, and influential public figure meets with the most refined, young, and disruptive intelligences. With her here in Venice, La Biennale confirms what it has offered the world for over a century: to be the home of the future.”
Dating back to 1895, the Venice Biennale is the oldest and most prestigious international art exhibition in the world. In 2015, Okwui Enwezor (1963-2019) served as artistic director of the 56th Venice Biennale. The Nigeria-born, Munich-based curator who spent his early career in New York, was the first Black person and first African-born curator to organize the international exhibition. Kouoh, 56, is the first Black woman to do so.
Kouoh’s artist-centered curatorial practice spans Africa, Europe, and the United States. Her vast experience includes institutional leadership, international biennials, exhibition making, cultural production, public programming, and publishing. Kouoh told the New York Times she is “ecstatic” about the opportunity to curate the next Venice Biennial.
“It is a once-in-a-lifetime honor and privilege to follow in the footsteps of luminary predecessors in the role of Artistic Director, and to compose an exhibition that I hope will carry meaning for the world we currently live in — and most importantly, for the world we want to make.” — Koyo Kouoh
SINCE 2019, KOUOH HAS LED Zeitz MOCAA where her key projects include “When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting” (2022-23). The exhibition was accompanied by a major publication and traveled to Kunstmuseum Basel earlier this year. At Zeitz MOCAA, she has also organized in-depth solo exhibitions of Otobong Nkanga, Johannes Phokela, Senzeni Marasela, Abdoulaye Konaté, and Mary Evans. Last year, her solo exhibition “Tracey Rose: Shooting Down Babylon” traveled to Queens Museum in New York.
Nearly two decades ago, Kouoh established her vision and identity in the art world when she founded RAW Material Company in Dakar, Senegal. Dedicated to art, knowledge and society, the institution opened in 2008, supporting African and international artists and curators and providing critical education, exhibition space, public programs, and a residency program.
As an independent curator, Kouoh has organized shows at institutions around the world, including “Body Talk: Feminism, Sexuality and the Body in the Works of Six African Women Artists” at Wiels in Brussels (2015) and “Saving Bruce Lee: African and Arab Cinema in the era of Soviet Cultural Diplomacy,” which she co-organized at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow and Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin (2015 and 2018).
On the biennial circuit, Kouoh served as a curatorial adviser for Documenta 12 (2007) and 13 (2012). She curated “Still (the) Barbarians” (2016) at the 37th EVA International, Ireland’s biennial in Limerick. In 2018, Kouoh presented “Dig Where You Stand” at the 57th Carnegie International in Pittsburgh. After mining the collection of the Carnegie Museum of Art, she mounted an exhibition within an exhibition designed to “reflect on the institution, its history, and colonialism.”
In addition, she curated the educational and artistic programming for the London and New York editions of the 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, from 2013 to 2017. Prior to establishing RAW Material Company, she held cultural posts at the Goethe Institut, the Goree Institute, and the U.S. Embassy in Senegal.
Kouoh grew up in Cameroon and moved to Zurich, Switzerland, with her family when she was 13 years old. After studying business administration and banking in Switzerland, she was educated in cultural management in France. Fluent in English, French, German, and Italian, Kouoh divides her time among Cape Town; Dakar, Senegal; and Basel, Switzerland.
“The International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia has been the center of gravity for art for over a century. Artists, art and museum professionals, collectors, dealers, philanthropists and an ever-growing public converge on this mythical site every two years to feel the pulse of the Zeitgeist. It is a once-in-a-lifetime honor and privilege to follow in the footsteps of luminary predecessors in the role of Artistic Director, and to compose an exhibition that I hope will carry meaning for the world we currently live in — and most importantly, for the world we want to make,” Kouoh said in a statement.
“Artists are the visionaries and social scientists who allow us to reflect and project in ways afforded only to this line of work. I am deeply thankful to La Biennale’s Board and particularly its President, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, for entrusting me with this momentous mission, and I look forward to working with the entire team.” CT
FIND MORE about Koyo Kouoh on Instagram
FIND MORE about the increasing presence of African artists, curators, and galleries at Art Basel Miami Beach (Dec. 6-8), where Koyo Kouoh is spending time this week
BOOKSHELF
The fully illustrated catalog “When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting.” accompanied the traveling exhibition of the same name organized by Koyo Kouoh at Zeitz MOCAA in 2022. Edited by Kouoh and now hard to find, “Shooting Down Babylon” (2022) is the first monograph of the work of South African artist Tracey Rose. Contributors include Kellie Jones, Christine Eyene, Khwezi Gule, Simon Njami, and Sean O’Toole. “Otobong Nkanga: Underneath the Shade We Lay Grounded” was co-authored by Kouoh. “Condition Report on Art History in Africa” (2020) documents a symposium at RAW Material and includes related communications, discussions, and essays. The symposium was the third edition of a series of gatherings inaugurated in 2011. Kouoh also published Breathing Out of School: RAW Académie (2021). Also consider, “All the World’s Futures: 56 International Art Exhibition. La Biennale di Venezia,” which documents the Venice Biennale curated by Okwui Enwezor in 2015.
