Ciara Hickey is a Curator based in Belfast. She is Co-Director of Household, an arts organisation that supports high quality art in the public realm. Recent projects include Red Sky at Night, a night time festival of international commissions across the city of Belfast and UPHOLD, a not for profit commissioning platform for promoting and selling contemporary art.

Ciara was previously curator of the Freelands Artist Programme through PS2 and co-curated the exhibition mother tongue with Alissa Kleist at the MAC Belfast in 2024 with 21 participating artists. She was curator of Belfast Exposed Photography where she worked on new commissions with artists including Bertien van Manen, Martin Parr, Michael Hanna and Jan McCullough and also initiated Belfast Exposed Futures, a programme for early career artists, establishing international exhibition partnerships with Seen Fifteen, Peckham 24, Landskrona Photography, CCI Paris, Unseen Amsterdam. 

From 2008-2010 Ciara co-organised the art Space Delawab in her home, and has continued to pursue an interest in the domestic space as a site for contemporary art including the exhibition House Taken Over in 2019 (with Nora Hickey M’Sichili). She recently co-authored (with Trish McTigue) the article, Home-made in Belfast: domesticity as creative practice in Northern Irish art and performance for the Irish Studies Review and recently received a curatorial research grant from Paul Mellon to explore art production in the domestic space in Belfast 1968 – present day. 

Ciara Hickey will curate Black Church Print Studio’s exhibition in The Library Project in September 2025.

Black Church Print Studio’s vision for its exhibition programme is to create dynamic visual art exhibitions that situate printmaking as a critical practice in contemporary art. By commissioning exhibitions with guest curators, the programme embraces print practices across a spectrum, ranging from traditional techniques to experimental and expanded forms. The exhibitions take place on street level beneath the print studio in the heart of Temple Bar, making visible the inner workings of the studio environment. They comprise of an invited curator and an open-call award for an emerging curator. The artist selection includes work from Black Church Print Studio members and invited artists. These curators respond to printmaking practice with fresh eyes, bringing their own curatorial perspective and experience.

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