Empty at the Biennale. The Death of Koyo Kouoh, Doubts About His Legacy and the Future of the Foundation
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In Venice
The Venice 2026 exhibition, without a guide, and facing a difficult choice: to start from scratch or continue its work. One solution would be to entrust the direction to Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, an authoritative and visionary figure, capable of giving new impetus to the event while respecting the past
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The tragic sudden death of Koyo Kouoh , curator of the Visual Arts Biennale that is due to open in May 2026 and whose theme and title should have been revealed very soon, puts the Venetian foundation in a difficult and complicated situation. Start from scratch or try to continue the work already done by the curator from Cameroon? I wouldn’t want to be in President Buttafuoco’s shoes. But if – making an effort of imagination – I were him I would suggest entrusting it to Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, former director of the Castello di Rivoli and curator of Documenta 13 in Kassel. I would entrust the Biennale to her for various reasons: for the harmony she had for the deceased curator, because she deserves it and because she has been trying to have it for I don’t know how many editions . As a museum director she hasn’t been good and, as I have already written in this newspaper, the exhibition on Arte Povera at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris was crying out for vengeance to the world.
But the Venice Biennale is a whole other story, and its Documenta was among the most interesting of the recent editions (apart from a few antics, like taking part of it to Kabul to pay homage to Alighiero Boetti). Now, if you do the Biennale, I suggest you not eliminate your friends, but avoid theorizing about them. W e curators, especially at a certain age, have long-standing friends and wherever we go we take them with us, no matter the theme of the exhibition . If our friend is Botero, we'll even include him in an exhibition on anorexia. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev shouldn't invent theories that justify a certain congenital nepotism in the art world. She deserves the Biennale because throughout her career she has had far-sighted visions and important ideas, sometimes obscured by a pathological narcissism that is also congenital and inevitable in our profession. An antidote to the uselessness of the profession.
It would be absurd to ask whoever is going to organize the Biennale to do what Koyo Kouoh had in mind. It is logical that whoever takes over the legacy respects the work done and then goes his own way. Knowing Kouoh, she would not appreciate a revised and corrected version of her ideas. The best way to honor both the work and the memory will be for the Biennale to accept what happened and look forward by choosing someone, Bakargiev, with experience, passion and enough arrogance to lead the institution out of the tunnel.
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