Koyo Kouoh gives an overview of her work as the Founding Artistic Director of RAW Material Company, a center for art, knowledge and society in Dakar, Senegal. In addition to exhibitions, RAW Material Company has developed a rigorous and wide-ranging approach to curatorial projects, education initiatives, and residencies.

Koyo Kouoh is the founding artistic director of RAW Material Company, a center for art, knowledge and society in Dakar, Senegal, and the curator of 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London and New York. She was recently appointed Artistic Director of Fabrica de Sabao, an art & innovation initiative in Luanda, Angola.
She served in the curatorial teams for documenta 12 (2007) and documenta 13 (2012). She most recently launched RAW Académie, an experiential school for artistic thought and curatorial inquiry. She was the curator of “Still (the) Barbarians” 37th EVA International, Ireland’s Biennial in Limerick (2016), “Streamlines: Oceans, Global Trade and Migration” at Deichtorhallen in Hamburg (2015), “Body Talk: Feminism, Sexuality and the Body in the work of six African women artists,” WIELS, Lunds Konsthall, 49N6E FRAC Lorraine (2015-2016), “Precarious Imaging: Visibility surrounding African Queerness,” RAW Material Company (2014); she edited “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; “Condition Report on Building Art Institutions in Africa,” a collection of essays resulting from the eponymous symposium held in Dakar in January 2012; “Chronicle of a Revolt: Photographs of a Season of Protest,” RAW Material Company & Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2012). Besides a sustained theoretical, exhibition, and residency program at RAW Material Company, she maintains a critical curatorial, advisory and judging activity internationally. In co-curation with Rasha Salti, Kouoh is working on “Saving Bruce Lee: African and Arab Cinema in the Era of Soviet Cultural Diplomacy,” a research and publication project to be held across different institutions in late 2017-18. She lives and works in Dakar, Luanda, and Basel.

Filmed on May 3, 2017.