Kouoh clearly had a talent for building and managing cultural institutions. In 2019, she was hired as the executive director and chief curator of the Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town, South Africa. She initially worked there as a member of the curatorial advisory group for five months, but was offered a permanent position since the museum was going through an unstable phase. Under her leadership, the museum became one of the continent’s leading art institutions, promoting the work of contemporary artists from Africa and its diaspora. After dealing with the radical disruption brought by the Covid-19 pandemic, she organized notable exhibitions including Home is where the Art is (2021), Tracey Rose: Shooting down Babylon (2022), and When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting (2023).

Before joining the Zeitz MOCAA, Kouoh had developed her curatorial expertise through various art events and exhibitions. She participated in the selection of artworks for documenta 12 (2007) and documenta 13 (2012) in Kassel, Germany. She was involved in the setup of the 1:54 contemporary African art fair since its inception in 2013. She led the educational programme of the fair hosted in London, and curated a series of seminars held in New York. She also organized groundbreaking exhibitions such as Body Talk (2015), a group show presenting the feminist work of six women artists from Africa. In 2016, she curated Still (the) Barbarians for the 37th EVA International, Ireland’s biennial held in Limerick.

Born in 1967 in Douala, Cameroon, Marie-Nöelle Koyo Kouoh grew up in Cameroon and was raised in Switzerland. She studied business administration in Zurich and cultural management in France. In 1995, she travelled to Dakar, Senegal, to work as a cultural writer and meet key figures of the local artistic scene. A year later, she moved permanently to pursue a career in the arts, working as an independent curator before creating an art space in 2008, the RAW Material Company. For a decade, her cultural center became a vital platform for emerging artists and art professionals, presenting quality exhibitions, hosting research programmes, publishing art books, and providing artists’ residency.