Cameroonian-Swiss curator Koyo Kouoh died on May 10, 2025, at the age of 57. As the visionary Executive Director and Chief Curator of Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town, and the founder of RAW Material Company in Dakar, Kouoh was undeniably one of the most transformative figures in global contemporary art over the past three decades.
Her unexpected death arrived precisely twelve months before the scheduled opening of the 61st Venice Biennale (2026), for which she had been appointed artistic director. In a statement issued on May 27, 2025, the Biennale announced its decision to proceed with Kouoh’s exhibition framework: retaining her conceptual title In Minor Keys, her roster of invited artists, and her spatial architecture, to be carried forward by an advisory team she had personally selected.
Kouoh's curatorial philosophy was grounded in what she famously termed 'the institution as a site of hospitality and fierce intellectual care.' Rather than treating exhibition-making as a top-down didactic exercise, she built non-commercial ecosystems across the Global South that nurtured rigorous discourse, publishing, and archival preservation. At Zeitz MOCAA, her celebrated 2023 survey When We See Us repositioned Black figurative painting across a century of historical practice, emphasizing joy, domestic intimacy, and contemplation over reductive documentary trauma.
The decision to mount a major international biennial in the physical absence of its authorial curator raises profound structural questions. An exhibition is not merely an inert blueprint that can be mechanically assembled; it is a living, emergent conversation shaped by countless micro-adjustments during the installation process as canvases and bodies encounter physical light and architecture.
Koyo Kouoh’s departure leaves international contemporary art profoundly bereaved. Yet by anchoring her Venice vision in minor tonalities—in quietude, collective mourning, and archipelago solidarity—she ensured that her final curatorial gesture would not be a monument to individual ego, but an expansive sanctuary for others to inhabit.
Sources: Zeitz MOCAA official statement (May 11, 2025); La Biennale di Venezia press release (May 27, 2025); The Art Newspaper (May 12, 2025).