Dominique Petit-Frère

Biography

Dominique Petit-Frère holds an interdisciplinary background combining international development, architecture, and curatorial practice. Her academic training focuses on urbanism, social impact, and spatial justice, providing a strong foundation for her approach to design and cultural work.

In 2018, Dominique co-founded Limbo Accra, an architectural practice based in Ghana inspired by the fact that around 20% of Ghana’s built environment remains incomplete or underutilized. This sparked her commitment to reimagining urban spaces through design, research, and cultural collaboration. Limbo Accra prioritizes inclusive, context-driven interventions that respond to the complex social and political dynamics of African cities.

Building on this, Dominique founded Limbo Museum in 2024, located within an unfinished brutalist estate in Accra. The museum functions as both a physical space and a conceptual platform that embraces incompleteness as a strategy for experimentation and inquiry. Under her leadership, Limbo Museum challenges conventional institutional models by exploring intersections of contemporary art, urban transformation, sustainability, and spatial practice.

Dominique’s curatorial approach integrates architectural design with cultural programming, focusing on expanding access to public art and fostering dialogue across disciplines. She believes museums should serve as tools for development in the African context—spaces to be occupied and revitalized to suit the urban future of cities and to create collective responsibility for change. She aims to redefine the role of public art, design, and spatial practice in Africa and beyond.

Her current projects include exhibitions and public interventions addressing spatial justice, creative reuse of urban ruins, and ecological resilience in African cities. Dominique leads collaborative research investigating African spatial practices, blending vernacular traditions with contemporary design and cultural inquiry.

Through her work, Dominique strives to reshape cultural infrastructure in Africa by creating spaces that are open, experimental, and deeply connected to social and environmental realities.

Dominique Petit-Frère, Founder and Director of Limbo Museum in Accra, Ghana, has been awarded by Mercedes Vilardell and Eloisa Haudenschild.