The Swiss-Cameroonian Koyo Kouoh, current curator of the Zeitz-Mocaa museum in Cape Town, will be the curator of the 2026 Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art, the first African woman appointed to this position, the foundation announced. “The board of directors of the Venice Biennale (…) has decided to appoint Koyo Kouoh director of the visual arts sector, with the specific mission of curating the 61st International Art Exhibition in 2026”indicated the Biennale in a press release published Tuesday, December 4.
At the head of one of the main contemporary art museums on the African continent, the Zeitz-Mocaa in South Africa, for five years, Koyo Kouoh, 57, raised between Douala and Zurich, has also founded an art center in Dakar, Senegal.
“It is a unique honor and privilege to follow in the footsteps of illustrious predecessors in the role of artistic director and to create an exhibition that I hope will be meaningful for the world we live in right now and , more importantly, for the world we want to build”declared Koyo Kouoh in the same press release.
With her, the biennial designates a champion of Pan-Africanism, a “evidence” according to her, and even pandiasporism. Koyo Kouoh explained to AFP last year her attachment to what she calls “black geographies”, seeing the influences “undeniable” throughout the world “black culture”from the United States to Brazil, where his predecessor Adriano Pedrosa, at the head of the 2024 Biennale, came from.
“The narrative of the continent has been largely defined by others and that is still the case,” she delivered from the wheat silos of the port of Cape Town, converted into an essential museum of the continent.
Koyo Kouoh is only the second curator of the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art from the African continent. The Nigerian-American Okwui Enwezor, who died in 2019, is the only one to have preceded her when he directed the 56th edition in 2015.
A year after the appointment as head of the foundation of the Sicilian intellectual Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, declared support of the Italian head of government and far-right party boss Giorgia Meloni, it is “on the proposal of the president” that Koyo Kouoh has been appointed curator, specifies the Biennale.
