Pakistan’s first VXR Festival, dedicated to virtual and extended reality art, has opened in Lahore with work from 70 artists from Pakistan and several other countries.
The inaugural festival opened at Alliance Française de Lahore on Sunday, bringing artists, creative professionals and visitors together to experience art through virtual reality, augmented reality and other immersive technologies.
Artists From Pakistan and Abroad Participate The festival, titled “Between the Prompts // V. 1,” features artists from Pakistan, France, Spain, Canada, the United States and other countries.
It has been curated by Dr Najamul Assar and Sarah Rajper, with Zainab Aamir serving as assistant curator.
The project is supported by the Embassy of France in Pakistan, Alliance Française de Lahore, Institut français, Embassy of Spain in Pakistan and AECID, in collaboration with UNESCO. Sixteen artists were featured during the opening programme.
They included Adriaan Lokman, Amna Tariq, Anusha Khalid, Asma Kazmi, Che-Kuang Chuang, Jérémy Griffaud, Jill Miller, Lola Zoido, Manel Pascual Bafaluy, Mansoor Ali, Marie Lienhard, Marion Pédebernade, Nicolas Thépot, Pierre-Alain Pédebernade, Sana Akram and Sandrine Deumier.
Visitors Experience Art Through VR Headsets Unlike a conventional art exhibition, the VXR Festival allows visitors to experience artworks using VR headsets, screens and augmented-reality technology.
The “Between the Prompts” theme examines the relationship between human instructions and machine-generated visual output.
It also explores how artists are responding to algorithms and emerging technologies that increasingly influence the creation of images and digital content.
A meet-the-artists session was also held during the opening, featuring AB Rehman, Anusha Khalid, Lola Zoido, Mansoor Ali, Marie Lienhard and Sandrine Deumier.
Festival Combines Traditional Art With New Technology Several projects at the festival use immersive technology to reinterpret traditional art, cultural heritage and storytelling.
One of the major attractions is a Claude Monet virtual reality experience, being presented in Pakistan for the first time through the Institut français collection.
The experience takes visitors from Monet’s garden in Giverny into his famous Water Lilies works at the Musée de l’Orangerie. Pakistani artist Sana Akram’s “Sun” adapts the Urdu Tilismi Dastan storytelling tradition into an immersive environment.
Meanwhile, AB Rehman’s “Al Buraq 2. 0” places a figure rooted in cultural and religious memory into a futuristic setting.
Other works include Jérémy Griffaud’s “Under the Sky,” which uses almost 300 watercolour paintings created in Borneo, and Faqeha Nadeem’s “Every Day,” which uses augmented reality to animate drawings from a sketchbook.
Festival to Move From Lahore to Islamabad Following its opening at Alliance Française de Lahore, the festival is continuing at different venues in the city.
Its program includes activities at R Space at the Mariam Dawood School of Visual Arts and Design and Beaconhouse National University, with another program scheduled at BNU on November 12.
The festival will then move to Islamabad from November 13 to 15, where audiences will get another opportunity to experience the VR and XR installations.
The VXR Festival is an initiative of the team behind the Lahore Digital Arts Festival, which has promoted digital art and creative technology in Pakistan since 2019.
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