Koyo Kouoh will be the curator of the Venice Biennale 2026

The curator of the Venice Biennale 2026 has been appointed: she is Koyo Kouoh (Cameroon, 1967). Indeed, the new Director of the Visual Arts Sector, appointed at the proposal of Biennale President Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, will be in charge of curating the 61st International Art Exhibition.

Koyo Kouoh, a native of Cameroon and Switzerland, has served since 2019 as Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, South Africa. Prior to this position, she founded and led the RAW Material Company in Dakar, Senegal, a center dedicated to art, knowledge and social reflection. In 2007 and 2012, he also played a decisive role in the curatorial teams of documenta 12 and documenta 13. In 2020, he received the prestigious Grand Prix Meret Oppenheim, a Swiss award that recognizes excellence in the fields of art, architecture, criticism and exhibitions.

“The Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition has been the center of gravity for art for more than a century. Artists, art and museum professionals, collectors, gallery owners, philanthropists and an ever-growing public gather in this mythical place every two years to catch the pulse of the zeitgeist. It is a unique honor and privilege to follow in the footsteps of distinguished predecessors in the role of Artistic Director and create an exhibition that I hope will be meaningful to the world we currently live in and, more importantly, to the world we want to build. Artists are the visionaries and social scientists who allow us to reflect and project in ways that only this profession allows. I am deeply grateful to the Biennale’s Board of Directors and in particular its President, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, for entrusting me with this very important mission and I look forward to working with the entire team,” said Koyo Kouoh.

“The appointment of Koyo Kouoh as the artistic director of the Visual Arts Sector is the cognizance of a broad horizon of vision in the dawning of a day prodigal with new words and eyes. Indeed, her gaze as a curator, scholar and protagonist in the public arena meets the finest, youngest and most disruptive intelligences. With her here in Venice, La Biennale confirms what it has been offering the world for more than a century: to be the home of the future,” said Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, president of La Biennale di Venezia.

Notes on the curator

Koyo Kouoh has curated major exhibition events. These include Body Talk: Feminism, Sexuality and the Body in the Works of Six African Women Artists, which premiered in 2015 in Wiels, Brussels, Belgium. In 2016, she curated the 37th edition of EVA International, the Biennale of Ireland, hosted in Limerick, and took part in the 57th edition of Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States, with the 2018 project Dig Where You Stand, an exhibition embedded within a larger exhibition inspired by the collections of the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History. Kouoh also initiated the research project Saving Bruce Lee: African and Arab Cinema in the Era of Soviet Cultural Diplomacy, developed with Rasha Salti, and presented at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin between 2015 and 2018. With a critical approach that embraces a pan-African and global vision, Kouoh has published numerous texts, including When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting in 2022, on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA; Shooting Down Babylon in 2022, the first monograph devoted to South African artist Tracey Rose; Breathing Out of School: RAW Académie in 2021; Condition Report on Art History in Africa in 2020; Word!Word?Word! Issa Samb and The Undecipherable Form in 2013; and Condition Report on Building Art Institutions in Africa in 2012. From 2013 to 2017, he directed the Education and Art Program of the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, an international fair dedicated to African art and its diaspora, held in London and New York. During her time at Zeitz MOCAA, she organized in-depth monographic exhibitions on African and African-descended artists, including Otobong Nkanga, Johannes Phokela, Senzeni Marasela, Abdoulaye Konaté, Tracey Rose, and Mary Evans.

Koyo Kouoh will be the curator of the Venice Biennale 2026

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