Koyo Kouoh, acclaimed curator and executive director of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town, has passed away, the museum announced today. According to a statement shared via Instagram, the institution received news of her “sudden passing” in the “early hours” of May 10.
Kouoh, born in Cameroon, was a pioneering force in global contemporary art and a fierce advocate of Pan-Africanism in curatorial practice. She had been appointed to direct the 61st Venice Biennale, scheduled to open in April 2026, a milestone widely seen as a recognition of her influence and commitment to centering African perspectives in the international art world.
Since 2019, Kouoh had served as executive director and chief curator at Zeitz MOCAA, where she led a transformative reimagining of the museum’s programming, governance, and mission. Before that, she founded RAW Material Company in Dakar, Senegal, a critical hub for artistic production and discourse in West Africa. Her international credentials also included her role on the curatorial teams of Documenta 12 (2007) and Documenta 13 (2012).
Tributes to Kouoh have come in from across the cultural world. Among them was one shared by Beatrice ‘Bee’ Arthur, Leader of the Fashion Domain Ghana, who reflected on the gravity of Kouoh’s loss and the deeper questions it raises:
“Just as the world prepared to embrace her vision as Artistic Director of the 2026 Venice Biennale, death, uninvited and indifferent, intervened. The art world stands stunned. Another luminous African voice, silenced. Another African Artistic Director of the Biennale, gone too soon.
We remember Okwui Enwezor. His 2015 Biennale, All the World’s Futures, was a clarion call that reverberated far beyond the Giardini. He reoriented the gaze of the global art establishment, demanded new narratives, and made space where there had been only margins. Cancer claimed him in 2019. Now Koyo.
Her curatorial language was rigorous, lucid, and defiantly African, not in cliché, but in conviction. She carried within her the pulse of Dakar, the urgency of Johannesburg, and the intelligence of the global south. Her appointment was not just a personal achievement; it was a promise. A signal that the centre was shifting. That we were being seen. That promise has been cruelly interrupted.
We must ask: why do those who hold the vision, the burden, and the brilliance of the continent so often carry it at the cost of their health, their time, their lives? Is it the pressure to perform within exhausted systems? Is it the toll of being the “first,” the “only,” the “rare African voice” in Eurocentric spaces?
This is more than a loss. It is an indictment. It is a reminder. Let us not only grieve. Let us build systems that nurture rather than consume. Let us honour Koyo not just in memory, but in method, in action, in resistance.
Rest well, sister. Your legacy walks with us.”
Kouoh’s passing leaves a significant void in the global art community, but her work, both institutional and intellectual, will continue to shape the discourse around African art and its place on the world stage.
