The first time a young Koyo Kouoh attended Art Basel, it was with a sense of wonder. In her previous interviews, she highlighted how curious she was to get a sense of the process in the art world though she had never been a fan of art fairs. There she was, an art professional with a strong sense of the difference between enjoying art and understanding art, detached even as she was aware of the projected excitement one often feels in art fairs. Yet, she remained intrigued by it all.
For Cameroonian, Koyo Kouoh, it has always been about what goes on in the artist’s, the curator’s and the collector’s head. This is really where it becomes interesting; where you really have the flesh, the meat, the spirit, and the details of what motivates and animates someone to make art. To curate art and to collect art. Hence the conversations are crucial and absolutely integral. On the other hand, for non-professional audiences, a conversation is also a stepping stone or an entry to understand what all this is about actually.
Before Kouoh became the Chief Curator and Executive Director of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town in 2019, she had helped launch the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair. Additionally, Kouoh was the curator of the 1-54 FORUM, an educational programme at the Contemporary African Art Fair in London and New York. She is the founding artistic director of RAW Material Company, an art centre dedicated to art, knowledge and society in Dakar. As a long-time Swiss resident before her relocation to Dakar, Kouoh received The Swiss Grand Art Award / Prix Meret Oppenheim in 2020.
When Kouoh became the executive director at The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa,a facility that existed to exhibit a private collector’s collection in a former grain silo in the city’s rapidly gentrifying district, her first mission was to make it a space that can stand as an important tool of conversation, negotiation, and preservation. Long a close observer of South Africa from other parts of the continent, Kouoh believes her status as a foreigner—a condition central to her identity since leaving Cameroon—might be useful in starting conversations that locals cannot.
Image courtesy of Artnews
At RAW Material Company, her work includes supporting the work of African and international artists and curators in all contemporary art media as the centre serves as a link to critical art education, an exhibiting space for artists and curators, and home to a creative residency programme.
In her independent curatorial practice, specializing in photography, video, and art in the public space, she has organised meaningful and timely exhibitions in Brazil, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the United States and Scandinavia, amongst others. She has also written on contemporary African art.
As a person interested in the details of “what motivates and animates someone to make art, to curate art, to collect art,” Kouoh believes that conversations are an integral part of the art community. She believes that a conversation about what runs through the artists’, the curators’, and the collectors’ minds is important as it can guide outsiders – especially insiders- into what the entire process is all about. In over ten years of curating exhibitions, residencies, and forums, Kouoh has dedicated herself to a continuous practice of conversing.
You can read more about her here.
