The international art world is still coming to terms with the news that Cameroonian-Swiss curator Koyo Kouoh, who had been appointed to lead the 2026 Venice Biennale, died suddenly last Saturday 10 May, aged 57.

Alongside her curatorial role at the 2026 Venice Biennale, Kouoh was Executive Director and Chief Curator of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town, South Africa, a position she held since 2019.

Announcing her death, Zeitz MOCAA expressed profound sorrow and notified the public that the Museum would be closed until Tuesday 13 May for two days of mourning.

Venice Biennale management also issued a statement expressing their deep sadness at the untimely passing of the curator they had invited to lead their program from April to November 2026.

Their statement asserts that Kouoh’s death, ‘leaves an immense void in the world of contemporary art and in the international community of artists, curators and scholars who had the privilege of knowing and admiring her extraordinary human and intellectual commitment’.

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The Venice Biennale’s statement also noted a media conference will likely be next week on 20 May, in lieu of what would have been Kouoh’s first major Biennale presentation, and the day she would have announced the 2026 Biennale’s long-awaited title and theme.

At the time of her Biennale appointment, Kouoh outlined her objectives for the prestigious international event as centred on devising a program that would carry meaning for the world we live in today, and ‘most importantly, for the world we want to make’.

She also stated her belief that ‘artists are the visionaries and social scientists who allow us to reflect and project in ways afforded only to this line of work’.

Before working with the 2026 Biennale, Kouoh was a well-known curator of socially and politically-engaged exhibitions.

Her work included the group exhibition Body Talk: Feminism, Sexuality and the Body in the Works of Six African Women Artists, at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels in 2015, and more recently, When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting (November 2022 – September 2023), co-curated with colleague Tandazani Dhlakama at Zeitz MOCAA. Kouoh also edited the exhibition’s accompanying text, published by Zeitz MOCAA and Thames and Hudson.

Among the tributes flowing for this esteemed curator is a reference to Kouoh’s belief in art as strongly tied to the social sciences and as a vehicle to challenge societal thinking.

However, as she told The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage in 2017, her approach to art is not about ‘art as an illustrative system of whatever is going on in politics’. Rather, she intended to work with artists ‘who in themselves and in their practice, embed a thinking system that is political, or that addresses politics’. She did however, concede that ‘the line [between the two things] is very thin’.

In a piece published by The Guardian just this week (Tuesday 13 May), Kouoh wrote: ‘The stories I want to highlight go beyond art – they are about people, societies, and the ways in which our histories and futures are intertwined. What happens in Dakar resonates in Kuala Lumpur, just as shifts in Kuala Lumpur will echo in Seoul. The biennale offers a rare platform to explore these connections, dismantle barriers, and illuminate the cultural threads that bind us.’

What emerges strongly about Kouoh’s significant contributions to the art world over her esteemed career is her ability to navigate these subtle differences and present sophisticated exhibitions that challenge many dominant political narratives.

Her legacy leaves an important mark on the international art world for these achievements, as well as for her trailblazing role as the first ever African woman invited to curate a Venice Biennale program.