Irene Aristizábal is BALTIC's Head of Curatorial and Public Practice since 2019. She oversees the exhibitions and public programmes and has recently curated Judy Chicago’s first major survey in the UK and Abel Rodríguez first solo exhibition. She is co-curator (with Hammad Nasar) of British Art Show 9 (2021–23), the biggest touring exhibition of contemporary art in the UK, organised every five years by Hayward Gallery Touring. BAS9 will travel to Aberdeen, Wolverhampton, Manchester and Plymouth.

Prior to BALTIC, Irene worked as Head of Exhibitions at Nottingham Contemporary (2013–9), where she curated exhibitions and commissioned projects by Lis Rhodes, Pia Camil, Steffani Jemison, Otobong Nkanga, Simon Starling, Michael Beutler, Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz, Sun Ra, Rana Hamadeh, Danai Anesiadou, Danh Võ, Carol Rama and Asco. Recent group exhibitions include Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender Resistance (2018–9), States of America: Photography from the Civil Rights Movement to the Reagan Era (2017), and Rights of Nature: Art and Ecology in the Americas (2015). She was curator at the FRAC Nord Pas de Calais, Dunkirk in 2010–1, and was the recipient of the H+F Curatorial Grant (2010). Prior to that she co-directed the not-for-profit space Bétonsalon in Paris (2005–6). She has also curated exhibitions at the Fundació Miró, Barcelona; Maison Rouge, Paris; Form Content, London and the Museum of Health Sciences, Bogota.

Irene is a member of the Advisory Board of La Galerie, Contemporary Art Centre in Noisy-le-Sec, France.

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