Koyo Kouoh, Prominent Art World Figure, Is Dead at 57

Koyo Kouah, one of the most prominent figures in the world of world art, which had been scheduled to become the first African woman to cure the Venice Biennial, died on Saturday in Switzerland. She was 57 years old.

His death was confirmed by the organizers of the Biennial. The announcement did not cite a cause or said in which part of Switzerland he had died.

The Biennial said that the “sudden and premature” death of Mrs. Kouah occurred a few days before she was scheduled to announce the title and issue of next year. The statement added that his death “leaves an immense emptiness in the world of contemporary art.”

The Venice Biennale is possibly the most important event in the art world. After every two years since 1895, it always includes a large -scale group show, organized by the curator, together with the overflows of the national pavilions, organized independently.

A Biennial spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comments on which more. Kouah’s death would mean next year’s exhibition, which is scheduled for May 9 to November 22.

As curator and executive director of Zeitz Mocaa, one of the largest contemporary art museums in Africa, Mrs. Kouah builds a global reputation as a carrier of torches for color artists in Africa and in other places, their interests were global in scope. “I am an international curator,” he said last December in an interview with The New York Times.

When Mrs. Kouah ordered Zeitz Mocaa in 2019, the museum was fighting, led by an interim director, Azu Nwagbogu. Its founding director, Mark Coetzee, resigned in the midst of accusations that he harassed the members of his staff.

“The museum was in crisis when Koyo went on, later aggravated by the pandemic,” Janse Van Reneburg, who was a main curator in Zeitz Mocaa, said in a 2023 interview. “She brought him back to life.”

The artist Igshaan Adams, who hero a residence post in the museum for eight months MS. Kouah’s mandate said he had changed the way the local community on Zeitz Mocaa felt. “She made me, we worried us again about the museum,” he said. It was the first time, said Adams, who had experienced a true public commitment “to people who resemble me and speak like me.”

Mrs. Kouah frequently said in interviews that she never hoped to become a figure in the art world. He was born in Cameroon on December 24, 1967 and grew in Dooala, the capital and the largest economic capital in the country, before moving at age 13 to Switzerland, where he studied administration and business banks anically and worked with women social working migrants.

The turning point in his career came in the mid -20 years, when he became a mother. “He could not imagine raising a black boy in Europe,” Kouah said in the 2023 interview. In 1995, he moved to Dakar, Senegal, “to explore new borders and spaces,” and after working as an independent curator for several years, he founded Suffering Subject, a program of residence of artists that later expanded to include an exhibition space, a library and an academy that offered a program of mentor Young art.

“I thought it was surprising that it was not just a curator but a construction of institutions,” said Olaureemi C. Onabanjo, an associated photography curator at the Museum of Modern Art, in a 2023 interview. “A global thinker, rooted in Africa.” He added that Mrs. Kouah “encouraged and expanded a sense of possibility for a generation of African curators worldwide.”

While it is based on Dakar, Mrs. Kouah expanded her reputation as a blunt and visionary voice in the contemporary art scene. He worked on the curatorial teams for Documenta 12 and 13 and selected the educational and artistic program of the Contemporary African Art Fair 1-54, the Ireland Contemporary Art Biennial in 2016 and other international exhibitions.

Touria El Glaoui, founding director of 1-54, said in an interview that the EM. Kouah was “the most important curator of artists of the African continent”, adding: “He gave voice to so many talents.”

In the 2023 interview, Mrs. Kouah said she had initially rejected the idea of ​​Bar in the direction of Zeitz Mocaa. But after the conversations with black creams, he said, “there was a feeling that we cannot let this fail. We have nothing more like this in the continent.”

Through her career, Mrs. Kouah pressed to take African artists to a world that for a long time had ignored them or write them. “I am part of that generation of African art professionals who have pride and knowledge about the beauty of African culture, which has been defined by as many incorrect ways,” he said in the same interview.

“I don’t think we need to spend time correcting those stories,” he added. “We need to register other perspectives.”

The survivors include their partner, Philippe Mall. The complete information about the survivors was not immediately available.

Mrs. Kouah was a mentor of artists and curators around the world, “defending the people and ideas that they knew were important,” said Kate Fowle, director of the Hearthland Foundation Program for the Hearthland Foundation, an organization that supports democracy and collaboration in Spealberg.

His appointment as curator of the 2026 Venice Biennale was well received by the artistic community. “She was remarkable,” said Adrienne Edwards, a senior curator and associate director of curatorial programs at the Whitney American Museum of American Art in New York. He added that it was Kouah’s “unique ability to be based on a place, in itself, in artists, its ethical rooting, which deeply and specifically contoured its exhibition.”

Speaking to the Times after the announcement of her appointment, Mrs. Kouah said she wanted to create a program that “really talks about our times,” and added that she was a curator focused on the artist. “The artists will define where we are going,” he said.