I first came across the name Koyo Kouoh at the end of 2018. I was in Toronto, Canada, on a three-month-long writing fellowship organised by the Centre for Humanities at the University of the Western Cape, where I was doing my Ph.D. and the Jackman Humanities Institute, my host research entity at the University of Toronto. A book she edited, which I came across at the University of Toronto library, introduced me to her work. The publication’s title is Condition Report: Symposium on Building Art Institutions in Africa and it is a bilingual (English-French) reader compiling essays from a January 2012 symposium held at RAW Material Company, an art residency space Koyo had founded in Dakar, Senegal, in 2008. This book emerged as an influential work that helped shape my academic and curatorial sensibilities. In early 2019, over seven weeks between March and May, I undertook a residency at RAW Material Company. Known as CURA Session 6, the residency explored themes of curatorial practice under the artistic direction of Koyo Kouoh. During the seven weeks in residence at RAW, we were immersed in curatorial practice, guided by the ideas and methodologies of seasoned international curators who visited regularly—every few days—to think, share, and work closely with us.

It was over the course of this residency that Koyo Kouoh, the curator—not just the name or reputation—began to come into clear focus for me. She spoke with the kind of clarity and grace that held a room—equally articulate in French and English. It was evident that her insights were grounded in decades of hands-on experience. By the time I arrived at RAW, the independent space had been in existence for over ten years. From her very first public lecture, it became apparent just how important the space was—and how deeply respected Koyo was within the Senegalese art world. The residency offered a rigorous program filled with dialogue, spanning topics rooted in the specific geographies of each visiting curator’s context, as well as issues of broader global relevance. Toward the end of the residency, I had my one-on-one with Koyo—she met with each of us individually. I remember sitting opposite her, awed by her poise, her commanding presence softened by an unmistakable warmth. As we sat down, the first thing she said was, “Relax. I need you to relax.” She acknowledged that I was still new to curatorial practice and had much to learn, but expressed her desire for us to stay connected as she prepared to take up her role as Executive Director and Chief Curator at Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town.

One year on, it’s February 2020. I’ve just stepped into a new role as a part-time research assistant at Zeitz MOCAA—only for the world to unravel six weeks later as a global pandemic takes hold. Across the globe, strict lockdowns were enforced. The infected were isolated in hospitals, and the rest of the population was confined to their homes in a state of suspended normality. The crisis, unprecedented in scale, left cultural institutions particularly exposed, bearing some of the heaviest burdens. The museum closed its doors without warning, halting all activity as staff and the broader public struggled to comprehend the scale and implications of the moment. Not even a year into Koyo’s directorship—and just a few months into my own role—we found ourselves navigating a moment of sudden and total flux. Furloughs had begun, and concern about job security hung heavy among the staff. I could only imagine the difficult decisions Koyo was having to navigate. The museum had no choice but to pivot. So much of what we do in the art world depends on the physical—on the ability to engage with artworks in space, to experience them as they were meant to be seen. Equally vital are the invaluable human connections and relationships that are formed and nurtured, held together by art as the enduring adhesive. It was something Koyo understood intuitively and fully.

With the world turning to digital spaces for connection, museums and galleries scrambled to adapt—transferring exhibitions, events, and operations onto the internet. Koyo, an artist in the art of institution-building, came with a decisive plan. The museum’s next move was to stage a virtual symposium, which would come to be known as the Radical Solidarity Summit. Koyo, ever proactive, reached into her wide network, and the symposium came together with an exceptional roster of speakers and a surprisingly robust audience for what was still an experimental format. Building on that momentum, the museum launched Home Is Where The Art Is, an open call that invited Capetonians to bring their art into the museum to exhibit their creativity within its formal walls. The initiative struck a chord, becoming a resounding success that brought the museum closer to the people of Cape Town. When Koyo took on the position, it was in part because she refused to let the museum collapse under the weight of its challenges. The museum was still navigating the aftermath of a difficult launch under its first director and Chief Curator, Mark Coetzee. At that time, Zeitz MOCAA was one of the continent’s few contemporary art institutions of comparable scale, alongside Morocco’s MACAAL.

The legacy of colonialism left many post-colonial African nations in a state of disrepair, grappling with the monumental task of rebuilding their societies amid profound shortages in social and political infrastructure. Few viewed art—or turned to it—as a remedy for the enduring effects of colonialism. As a result, the continent faced a stark shortage of art and cultural institutions, and for those that did exist, survival and sustainability remained constant challenges. Zeitz MOCAA held significance not only for South Africa but for the entire continent. As an African institution situated in South Africa, it bore the responsibility of telling the stories of the continent’s people, as well as those of the diaspora. By redirecting the museum’s curatorial framework toward Pan-Africanism and articulating a vision anchored in the multiplicity of Black geographies, Koyo instigated a critical shift in the museum’s institutional orientation. This realignment was evident in both programming and public discourse, and it positioned the museum within broader global conversations on Black cultural production. Through her leadership, Zeitz MOCAA emerged from institutional instability to become a site of renewed credibility and significance. The trajectory of both Koyo and the museum became inseparable—each amplifying the other’s institutional and symbolic capital.

Koyo came with the purpose to reorient the museum’s programme toward solo exhibitions, spotlighting, particularly, women artists and amplifying the voices and stories of Africa and its global diaspora. This framework has been applied to exhibitions of artists like Senzeni Marasela, Tracey Rose, and Mary Evans, to name only a few. It was this combination—her vision, her energy, her sharp instincts, and the team she gathered around her—that steered the museum from the turmoil of its past leadership and the disruption of the pandemic into a new and promising phase. Fast forward to November 2020: When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration opens at Zeitz MOCAA—a powerful, expansive exhibition of twentieth and twenty-first-century paintings by Black artists worldwide. The exhibition is a sweeping, maximalist presentation of over 200 paintings by 156 artists from Africa and its global diaspora. Arriving at the crescendo of the commercial art world’s infatuation with Black figuration, the exhibition—curated by Koyo Kouoh and Tandazani Dhlakama—did not simply follow the trend, but interrogated it. By bringing together artists of varying Black subjectivities from across the world, the curators fostered a wide-ranging dialogue on Blackness as both lived experience and artistic strategy. Here, painting became the frame through which the layered politics of the strategic essentialism of Global Blackness were examined. Lauded for its curatorial ambition and intellectual depth, the exhibition unfolded alongside a thought-provoking webinar series that opened up rich conversations around the politics and philosophies of Blackness.

The exhibition When We See Us mirrored the spirit of Koyo’s earliest curatorial impulse—her translation of Margaret Busby’s Daughters of Africa into Swiss-German—a formative act of cultural mediation and representation. Living in Switzerland then, she was part of a small and often isolated Black minority within an overwhelmingly white European context. Her motivation for translating the book was to make it accessible to Black African communities in Switzerland who weren’t literate in English but were articulate in Swiss-German, allowing them to read and connect with its powerful narratives. It became evident that she conceived of publications as parallel curatorial platforms—vehicles for knowledge production and circulation that exceeded the temporal and spatial limitations of exhibitions, which are often bound by closure. From this period, her curatorial approach centred on constructing frameworks—both spatial and linguistic—for reciprocal modes of Black self-representation. The drive to construct self-determined spaces in the visual arts—where Black individuals and communities can represent themselves on their own terms—has become a key thread in contemporary African curatorial thinking in recent decades. 

Among the important independent art spaces that have surfaced in recent years are RAW Material Company (Koyo Kouoh), CCA Lagos (Bisi Silva), Savvy Contemporary (Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung), and the Centre for Historical Re-enactments (Gabi Ngcobo)—each a response to specific local and global urgencies. In the flood of tributes that followed her passing, it became heartbreakingly clear just how vital Koyo had been to the global art world. A fierce advocate for Black culture and an unsparing champion of artistic expression, her impact reverberated far and wide. Koyo saw curatorial work not merely as exhibition-making, but as a mode of cultural production and political engagement. Her practice encompassed far more—it demanded intellectual rigour, commercial acumen, and a deep engagement with the world beyond the gallery. While fully conscious of curating’s political implications, she also approached it with a keen sensitivity to its quieter, more intricate textures. Her curatorial insight transcended the traditional views of curating as either the preservation of artworks or the construction of meaning through spatial arrangement; she approached it as a multidimensional practice embedded in discourse, affect, and politics.

Koyo’s artistry extended beyond conventional creative practice into the realm of institution-building. She demonstrated exceptional aptitude in this domain, combining structural growth with a profound sensitivity to the human dynamics that sustain cultural organisations. She would often assert, “People don’t fall from the sky,” to underscore the fundamental role of human capital in our sector. This statement resonates with sociologist AbdouMaliq Simone’s theory of ‘People as Infrastructure,’ though she intended it in a manner that transcended purely instrumental or strategic considerations. Koyo, along with the curators named earlier, has played a key role in shaping the success of African contemporary art. By combining the development of institutions with the generation of discourse around global Black subjectivities, framed through modernist and contemporary art, the continent and its people have been elevated to the forefront of the international art conversation. This era has seen curatorial practice emerge as a scholarly field in its own right, characterised by a distinct intellectual apparatus and investigative techniques. Black African curatorial practice has simultaneously taken shape as a genre marked by a particular epistemic outlook, yet expansive in its exploration of themes tied to Black ontologies.

Fast forward to December 2024: Koyo is appointed Artistic Director of the 2026 Venice Biennale—a historic moment for the continent and beyond. I felt an immense sense of pride upon hearing the news—Koyo is one of the curators whose work deeply informed the focus of my Ph.D. A Black curator—more specifically, a Black African woman curator—is called to breathe new life into this much-vaunted art spectacle. Her appointment as Artistic Director of the 2026 Venice Biennale is both historic and long overdue. She will be the first Black woman to helm what is widely considered the most prestigious event in the international art world. Her selection is not merely symbolic; it is a resounding affirmation of a career that spans more than three decades, one defined by intellectual rigour, institutional building, and an unwavering commitment to centring African and diasporic perspectives in global art discourse. Events like biennials follow a predictable cycle; they appear on the calendar, generate a wave of attention, and then fade into the background until their next iteration. I often find myself on the periphery of such events, as they’re typically staged in contexts to which I have little immediate connection. This time, my interest feels more immediate—someone I knew well is at the helm, and that changes everything. I’m genuinely intrigued.

Several months later, on the morning of May 10th in Cape Town, the atmosphere is cool and calm. Guests arrive intermittently, creating a light and convivial ambience. The morning’s atmosphere offered no indication of the tragic news that would soon unfold. The team assembled to convene the symposium and launch of Nolan Oswald Dennis’ artist monograph for his first solo exhibition on the African continent, Understudies. As preparations concluded, we awaited the arrival of guests at 10 am, signalling the official commencement of the event. The programme commenced shortly after 10 am in the museum’s membership lounge. I witness my colleague Khanyi [Mawhayi] rushing out of the room, which signals a potential emergency, though such incidents frequently arise in the course of daily events. Without much reflection on her response, we proceed to lead the symposium attendees upstairs to the Understudies gallery space to continue with the scheduled programme. This portion of the programme highlights Letsema, a recipe-based site-specific sculpture developed by Nolan in collaboration with the teams from Exhibition Management and the Collections and Registrar Departments. 

While the column’s authors speak, I observe a notification on my phone from a colleague, informing me of an emergency and requesting my presence on the museum’s ground floor. Upon my arrival, she informs me that Khanyi has encountered a personal emergency and is unable to continue as Master of Ceremonies for the symposium, necessitating that I assume the role. I inquire about what transpired, but no clear explanation is provided. I head up to level four, hoping to find Khanyi and collect her speaking notes. On the way, I stumble upon two colleagues weeping. Strangely, even in that moment, the possibility of Koyo’s death doesn’t register. One of them beckons me into the office. As I enter the anteroom, I’m met by the sight of my colleagues huddled together, all in tears. I ask what’s going on, but no words come. Only the stunned expressions of those around me begin to tell the story. And then, one of them finally speaks to me, voice low and steady: “Koyo is gone. She passed away this morning.” I’m struck by disbelief, yet my mind also turns to the symposium still underway—its continuation, at least for now, seeming both necessary and surreal. In the wake of the news, I head down to level three, tasked now with taking over emceeing duties from Khanyi. Inside the elevator, I come across a couple. I’m visibly holding back tears when the woman, noticing my distress, assures me that it’s all right to cry—that I don’t need to hold it in. By the time I reach level three, I realise I’m not well enough to step in for Khanyi, so I go looking for another colleague who might be able to carry the moment.

She can tell I’m shaken—tears streaming as I try to speak. As the words land, I see her begin to crumble under the news as well. The announcement triggered a swift and sombre response, causing the museum to close and the symposium to be suspended. Though devastated, we found comfort in our shared presence; she had brought us together one last time. I cannot conceive of a different moment or manner in which I would have chosen to receive the news about my mentor, colleague, guiding light, and friend, Koyo Kouoh. Life is strange and sometimes heartbreaking, with a way of closing its own chapters. Nothing is accidental—the unfolding of events at the time of her death underscores the universe’s purposeful motion. The art world grieves a rare and exceptional person. It’s been a little more than a month since Koyo’s death. Though we’ve resumed the day-to-day, the loss still hangs close. A month isn’t long. This period has witnessed a proliferation of tributes: the official funeral in Basel, a solemn and dignified memorial at Zeitz MOCAA, and a celebratory homage by RAW Material Company in Dakar. 

The grammar of loss is confusing—how can we conjugate her into the past? That sense of loss is deeply felt by all of us. Yet, in institutional terms, a month is significant—particularly in sectors shaped by public scrutiny and shifting power dynamics. The spotlight now rests on Zeitz MOCAA: questions abound about its next chapter and future leadership. Of all people, it was she who had the insight and conviction to lead us forward—and now, in her absence, we’re left grappling with questions she might have already answered. The pursuit of clarity must not give way to inertia; we owe it to the moment to keep moving, however uncertain the path may be.