Salti remembers Kouoh as conductor who composed while the team improvised, beaming with her inimitable smile as she picked up fallen mangoes.
The courtyard sessions lasted from morning until evening, tuning instruments for a performance Kouoh conducted with grace and precision.
Pietrangelo Buttafuoco appointed Kouoh in 2024 as the first African woman to steer the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, trusting her with a vision he described as drawing new maps.
Kouoh died last year, a loss that grieved the art world. Her team carried forward an exhibition bearing the title In Minor Keys. The exhibition opens on 9 May with 111 participants, among them artist-led organisations from Dakar, Lagos, and Nairobi.
Raw Material Company, which Kouoh founded in Senegal, and Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, where she served as Executive Director in Cape Town, anchored a career spent weaving connections between artists across continents.
For Thirteen Pavilions, One Flattening Name
Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Morocco, Sierra Leone, and Somalia bring first-time national pavilions to Venice, joining Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Senegal, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.
The term “African art” collapses distinct genealogies into a single marketable phrase, erasing the specificity of Aimé Mpané’s Le souffle in the pavilion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mpané channels spiritual breath through sculptural form. Edouard Duval-Carrié imagined créole gardens nourished by Vodou pantheons. Kouoh planned griot-inspired poetry for the Giardini processions, honoring the word-carriers who ferried salt and gold across deserts.
Each practice resists the umbrella term. Caroline Gueye represents Senegal at Palazzo Navagero. Tegene Kunbi anchors Ethiopia’s presentation at Palazzo Bollani.
Speaking of one continental style invites confusion, given the distance between Dakar’s poetic processions and Addis Ababa’s painterly traditions. A single label contains multitudes poorly. The Venice lineup proves the point effortlessly.
Buyers Trail the Curators
Auction sales of works by African artists reached $70.5 million globally last year, rising 43 percent from the previous year. Strauss and Co. in South Africa posted $28 million in sales during 2025, with a third of buyers new to the auction house. Volume at African art fairs contracted, with the Marrakech fair shrinking to twenty-two galleries.
Such data describe appetite. Curators set the table first. Collectors express appetite afterward.
Kouoh’s RAW Material Company in Dakar and her work at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town built the intellectual scaffolding upon which collectors now climb. Her Schools motif places the GAS Foundation in Lagos and the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute at the centre of the exhibition, asserting that artist-led spaces generate value long before gallerists bring price lists.
Commercial interest trailed the curators, reversing the old order in which deep pockets had once set the terms of taste.
Curators Answer With Youthful Vision
Demographers have long tracked Africa’s youthful population, and commercial forecasters love a rising consumer base. The current Biennale includes Mohammed Z. Rahman, entering the world in 1997, as its youngest participant, alongside Mmakgabo Mmapula Helen Sebidi, born 1943.
Data analysis shows African-born artists making up 20 percent of the exhibition, up from 10 percent in 2024.
Kouoh selected artists across generations, treating youth as a source of vision and young practitioners as full participants. Her processional motif draws on Afro-Atlantic carnival traditions. Nick Cave joins Alvaro Barrington in assemblies where bodies carry memory. Big Chief Demond Melancon contributes his Mardi Gras suits to choreographies untouched by commercial exchange.
The demographic dividend supplies context. The curatorial vision supplies meaning. Youthful energy pulses through the exhibition.
Kouoh treated young practitioners as artists with full agency, honoring their creative independence above market utility. She placed Mohammed Z. Rahman near Mmakgabo Mmapula Helen Sebidi to insist on dialogue between generations, letting artistic value transcend age.
Kouoh’s colleagues at RAW Material Company describe the relationship with artists as fundamentally human, rooted in care and listening.
A Turn to Listen
The current Biennale hosts ninety-nine national pavilions, up from eighty-six in 2024, with around forty-five from Europe and thirteen from Africa.
The tally of representation still favours European countries. The curatorial centre of gravity has moved regardless. The Giardini themselves, products of the European imperial era, now house indigo banners that Kouoh’s team hung as passages between practices and countries alike.
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