Koyo Kouoh © Venice Biennale The Board of the Venice Biennale has announced Koyo Kouoh as the curator for its 61st edition. Since 2019, Kouoh has served as the Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town.
“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,” the statement from the Board’s president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco reads.
“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”.
The announcement of Koyo Kouoh as the first African woman to curate the 2026 Venice Biennale, and the second African-born curator in this role after Okwui Enwezor, highlights the exhibition’s commitment to amplifying diverse curatorial positions and artistic voices within the context of the globalized art world.
Among leading curators on the continent, Kouoh has earned recognition for her dedication, innovative approach, and expertise in showcasing art created on the African continent and running its leading institution, Zeitz MOCAA. She expressed her delight at hearing the news.
"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."
Born in Cameroon in 1967 and educated in Switzerland, Kouoh has been at the forefront of cultural innovation for years. She founded the Raw Material Company exhibition space in Dakar and brought a new business model to the Zeitz MOCAA in 2019—she transformed its governance and set up an international council and American friends organization in its support. She is also on a mission to promote African philanthropy, emphasizing that “the culture of giving is an essential part of African society. Yet, very few people know that you can buy art for institutions.”
Her curatorial approach can be best assessed through her recent shows, including the 2022 overview of artist Tracey Rose’s oeuvre, which occupied the entire museum; When We See Us, exploring the post-Apartheid society in the country; and the most recent and still ongoing Sala, that features works from across the continent and the US. Her international curatorial projects include Body Talk: Feminism, Sexuality and the Body in the Works of Six African Women Artists, shown in Brussels in 2015, and Still (the Barbarians) at the Ireland Biennial in Limerick in 2016.
Kouoh is also active as a writer and art critic with an impressive list of publications to her name, including When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting (2022) which accompanied the exhibition of the same name at Zeitz MOCAA, Breathing Out of School: RAW Académie (2021), Condition Report on Art History in Africa (2020), and Condition Report on Building Art Institutions in Africa (2012), among others.
Commenting on her vision for the 61st Biennale for NYT, she explained that she is, first and foremost, an "artist-centered curator" who will allow artists to define the show’s direction; it will be a strong presentation addressing our times and "where we want to go."
