| Marie-Nöelle Koyo Kouoh | |
| Birth Date: | 1967 |
| Birth Place: | Cameroon |
| Known For: | art curation, director of Zeitz MOCAA |
Koyo Kouoh (born 1967) is Cameroonian-born curator who has been serving as Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town since 2019.[1] In 2015, the New York Times called her "one of Africa’s pre-eminent art curators and managers",[2] and from 2014 to 2022, she was annually named one of the 100 most influential people in the contemporary art world by ArtReview.[3]
Kouoh was raised in Cameroon and later Switzerland. As an adult, she moved to Dakar to build an art career, working as an independent curator and founding an artist's residency and exhibition space, the RAW Material Company. In 2019, she was appointed the director of the recently opened Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa.
Born in 1967, Kouoh lived in Douala, Cameroon until the age of 13 before moving with her family to Zürich, Switzerland, where she stayed for the next decade and a half. She studied business administration and banking in Switzerland as well as cultural management in France. She is fluent in French, German, English and Italian.
In 1994, Kouoh co-edited Töchter Afrikas, a German-language companion to Margaret Busby’s Daughters of Africa, collection of writings by women of the African diaspora. The following year, she traveled to Dakar, Senegal, to interview filmmaker Ousmane Sembène. After encountering the city's vibrant art scene, including meeting painter Issa Samb, and frustrated with anti-black racism in Europe, Kouoh decided to move to Dakar and pursue an art-related career.
Kouoh initially worked as a cultural officer for the US Consulate and as an independent curator. In 2000, she met South African artist Tracey Rose and Nigerian-Belgian artist Otobong Nkanga, both whom Kouoh would feature in many future exhibitions.[4] In 2001 and 2003, Kouoh served as co-curator – alongside writer Simon Njami – on Les Rencontres de la Photographie Africaine in Bamako, a photography biennial held in Mali.
From 2008 until 2019, Kouoh served as the founding artistic director of RAW Material Company,[5] a Dakar artist's residency, exhibition space, and academy. Over the following decade, RAW built a reputation for quality exhibitions and became a respected cultural center. In 2014, the group faced controversy for an exhibition titled "Personal Liberties", which included LGBT stories. When local Muslim leaders protested and the RAW building was vandalized, RAW decided to cancel the show.
Kouoh has served as curatorial advisor for Documenta 12 (2007) and 13 (2012) and the EVA International (Republic of Ireland's biennial of contemporary art) in 2016.[6] For the latter, she organized a show based on postcolonial themes, in part to celebrate the centenary of the Easter Rising.[7] The exhibition's title, "Still (the) Barbarians", referenced the poem "Waiting for the Barbarians" by Greek author Constantine P. Cavafy. It included artists such as Kader Attia, Liam Gillick, Abdoulaye Konaté, Alice Maher, and Tracey Rose. Art critic Niamh NicGhabhann described it as "[engaging] in an elegant, assured, often furious debate with the ideas of 1916".[8]
In 2014, Kouoh was the curator of the education programme at 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London[9] and helped to reform the Dakar Biennale. She was on the search committee that chose the Polish curator Adam Szymczyk as artistic director for documenta 14 in 2017.
From 2014 to 2022, Kouoh was annually named one of the 100 most influential people in the contemporary art world by ArtReview, peaking at #32 in 2020.[10]
The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, South Africa—the African continent's largest museum—opened in 2017, built around the art collection of philanthropist Jochen Zeitz. However, the following year, its director, Mark Coetzee, was suspended following accusations of sexual harassment. Kouoh was appointed as his replacement as executive director and chief curator in 2019.[11]
At the time of Kouoh's arrival, according to one newspaper report, "morale was low and exhibitions lackluster." Over the next year, Kouoh expanded the curatorial team and the board of trustees, as well as adding artist residency programs. After a COVID-19 related closure, the museum re-opened to much greater audiences. In her curation, Kouoh emphasizes solo retrospectives, believing that it is the most effective way to tell artists' stories. Retrospectives she has organized include Mary Evans, Tracey Rose, and Johannes Phokela. The Rose retrospective also toured to the Queens Museum in the United States, where a New York Times reviewer described it as dealing with "post-colonial complexities, such as repatriation, recompense and reckoning".[12]
In 2020, Kouoh received The Swiss Grand Award for Art / Prix Meret Oppenheim. The Award was founded in 2001 and honors figures from the worlds of art and architecture as well as criticism, curation, and research whose work is of particular relevance and importance for contemporary art and architecture in Switzerland and beyond.[13]
Kouoh has three adopted children. She lives in South Africa and Switzerland.https://www.annabelle.ch/leben/afrika-ist-kunst-immer-politisch-50904/