Koyo Kouoh Appointed to Curate 2026 Venice Biennale
The Cameroonian-Swiss curator will be the first African woman to lead the pinnacle exhibition since its inception in 1895.
Koyo Kouoh. Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia. Photo: Mirjam Kluka.
Koyo Kouoh will curate the 61st Venice Biennale, which will take place in 2026. Kouoh is the first African woman appointed by the Biennale board to lead the lauded exhibition since its inception in 1895.
As the executive director of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town, the Cameroon-born curator has supported the global exhibition of African art since joining the museum in 2019.
During her tenure, the museum held solo exhibitions by African and African-descent artists, including Otobong Nkanga, Tracey Rose, and Mary Evans. From 2022 to 2023, they hosted the monumental survey When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting.
'I have grown beyond the idea of Africa as a geographical region, and rather, treat it as a mindset to give it a mental space that can be inhabited by anyone interested in the idea of Africa,' Kouoh told Ocula in 2014.
Prior to Zeitz MOCAA, Kouoh founded RAW Material Company, an arts centre in Dakar, Senegal, and worked on the curatorial teams for documenta 12 (2007) and documenta 13 (2012).
'The [Venice Biennale] has been the centre of gravity for art for over a century,' Kouoh said, noting she hopes to compose an exhibition that 'will carry meaning for the world we currently live in—and most importantly, for the world we want to make'.
'With [Kouoh] in Venice, La Biennale confirms what it has offered the world for over a century: to be the home of the future,' said Biennale President, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco. —[O]
