Irene Aristizábal is Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art’s Head of Curatorial and Public Practice since 2019. She has recently curated exhibitions by Carolina Caycedo, Judy Chicago, Ad Minoliti and Abel Rodríguez. She was the co-curator of British Art Show 9 (2021–22), the biggest touring exhibition of contemporary art in the UK, organised every five years by Hayward Gallery Touring. Prior to BALTIC, Irene worked as Head of Exhibitions at Nottingham Contemporary, where she curated exhibitions and commissioned projects by artists including Pia Camil, Steffani Jemison, Otobong Nkanga, Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz, Sun Ra, 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, 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). Irene was a jury for the Turner Prize 2022.

Irene participated in ‘Cosmovisions on Land and Entangled Futures’ em 2023.