By Alessia D’introno
Following the recent passing of curator Koyo Kouoh (1967–May 10, 2025), who had been appointed by President Pietrangelo Buttafuoco to curate the 61st International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2026, the art world has responded with deep sorrow and a sense of loss. One of the main questions concerned the future of the exhibition she had conceived, which was completed prior to her death in April 2024.
During the official presentation of the Biennale, held on May 27 in the Sala delle Colonne at Ca’ Giustinian, a tribute was paid to her vision and presence in Venice. Her family, together with the curatorial team, confirmed their intention to carry forward and fully realize the work she began, in honor of her artistic and intellectual legacy.
The team overseeing the completion of the exhibition includes advisors Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Hélène Pereira, and Rasha Salti; editor-in-chief Siddhartha Mitter; and assistant Rory Tsapayi. All have committed to faithfully upholding and amplifying Kouoh’s vision and intentions.
The edition she envisioned, titled In Minor Keys, was presented with great depth: “an exhibition attuned to minor tonalities, inviting us to feel the tones of life—tones of strangeness, melancholy, and pain—which here manifest as hope and transcendence.” The exhibition is an invitation to slow down, to become lost with all the senses, to enter a suspended space where art is no longer mere representation but a tool for connection and rebalancing. As in jazz, everything is open to the unexpected. It does not offer a direct response to the world’s crises, nor an escape from them: it is a radical proposal for an alliance with nature and with what has long been excluded or disparaged—such as craft, ornamentation, and ritual.
In Minor Keys asserts the importance of listening to what is hushed, invisible, marginal: “the time has come to hear the whispers, the low frequencies, to discover oases, islands…” The participating artists work on the edges of form, guided by deep sensitivity and sincere commitment in the midst of constant transformation. They do not seek to impose, but to welcome. Through them, the exhibition opens spaces for dreaming, meditation, and silent resistance, where there is no claim to speak on behalf of others—only the willingness to truly listen.
The presentation closed with a veil of sadness, yet also with hope, carried by a poem written by Koyo Kouoh in November 2022
And frankly I’m tired.
People are tired.
we’re all tired.
The world is tired.
Even the art itself is tired.
Perhaps it’s time we need something else.
We need to heal.
We need to laugh.
We need to be with beauty.
So much beauty.
We need to play.
We need to be with poetry.
We need to be with love again.
We need to dance.
We need to make and share food.
We need to rest and be restored.
We need to breathe.
We need radicalness and joy.
The time has come.
Koyo Kouoh was an influential curator, cultural producer, and arts luminary known for her visionary work in contemporary African art. She served as the Executive Director and Chief Curator at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town from May 2019 until her passing in May 2025. Prior to this, she was the founding Artistic Director of RAW Material Company, a centre for art, knowledge, and society in Dakar, Senegal. In 2024, Kouoh was appointed by the Board of La Biennale di Venezia, upon the recommendation of President Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, as Director of the Visual Arts Department to curate the 61st International Art Exhibition, scheduled for 2026.
Kouoh’s curatorial practice was distinguished by her commitment to meaningful and timely exhibitions. Among her celebrated projects were Body Talk: Feminism, Sexuality and the Body in the Works of Six African Women Artists, first shown at WIELS in Brussels, Belgium (2015); Still (the) Barbarians, the 37th EVA International, Ireland’s Biennial in Limerick (2016); and Dig Where You Stand, part of the 57th Carnegie International in Pittsburgh (2018), an exhibition that deeply examined the collections of the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History. She also initiated Saving Bruce Lee: African and Arab Cinema in the Era of Soviet Cultural Diplomacy, a research project co-curated with Rasha Salti at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, Russia, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Germany (2015–2018).