Koyo Kouoh

Koyo Kouoh is Cameroonian-born, independent exhibition maker and cultural producer, educated in banking administration and cultural management in Switzerland and France. She is the founding artistic director of RAW Material Company,^[1] a center for art, knowledge and society in Dakar. She is the curator of the education programme at 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair ^[2] in London. Kouoh has served as curatorial advisor for documenta 12 (2007) and 13 (2012), co-curated Les Rencontres de la Photographie Africaine in Bamako in 2001 and 2003 as well as collaborated in different capacities with the Dakar Biennial. In February 2014, she was entrusted by the European Union and the Senegalese Ministry of Culture with the development of a thorough reform of the Dakar biennial.

Exhibitions

Specializing in photography, video and art in the public space, she has curated numerous exhibitions internationally and written on contemporary African art. Her most recent projects include Body Talk: Feminism, Sexuality and the Body in the Work of Six African Women Artists,^[3] Personal Liberties, a program composed of three exhibitions, seminars, talks, screenings and an upcoming publication looking at sexuality in Africa, homosexuality and homophobia, Condition Report on Building Art Institutions in Africa,^[4] a collection of essays resulting from the eponymous symposium held in Dakar in January 2012, Word!Word?Word! Issa Samb and the undecipherable form,^[5] the first monograph dedicated to the work of seminal Senegalese process oriented artist Issa Samb. Besides a sustained theoretical and exhibition program at Raw Material Company, she maintains a dynamic international curatorial activity. Her discursive programs, exhibitions and publications have included contemporary artists, thinkers, photographers, writers, activists, non-artists, designers, collectors, politicians, architects, curators and chefs. She lives and works in Dakar.

References