Biography

Koyo Kouoh is the founding artistic director of RAW Material Company, a centre for art, knowledge and society in Dakar, Senegal.

Among her curatorial projects are Dig Where You Stand, 57th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, US (2018), an exhibition within an exhibition based on the Carnegie Museum of Art’s collection; Saving Bruce Lee: African and Arab Cinema in the Era of Soviet Cultural Diplomacy (with Rasha Salti), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2016–2018); 1-54 FORUM (2013–2017), the educational programme at the Contemporary African Art Fair in London and New York; and Still (the) Barbarians, 37th EVA International, Limerick, Ireland (2016). She also served on the curatorial teams for documenta 13 (2012) and documenta 12 (2007).

Kouoh also has a number of publications, including WORD! WORD? WORD! Issa Samb and the Undecipherable Form (RAW Material Company/OCA/Sternberg Press, 2013), the first monograph dedicated to the work of seminal Senegalese artist Issa Samb (aka Joe Ouakam); Condition Report: Symposium on Building Art Institutions in Africa (Ostfildern Hatje Cantz, 2012), a collection of essays resulting from the eponymous symposium held in Dakar; and Chronicle of a Revolt: Photographs of a Season of Protest (RAW Material Company and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 2012).

In addition to a overseeing a sustained theory, exhibition and residency programme at RAW Material Company, she continues critical curatorial and advisory activities and regularly takes part in artist juries and selection committees.

Born in 1967 in Douala, Cameroon, Kouoh currently lives and works between Dakar and Basel.

SAF participation:
March Meeting 2019

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