Pakistan’s first virtual reality festival opens in Lahore with works of 70 artists

LAHORE: Pakistan’s first virtual and extended reality festival opened to a full house in Lahore on Sunday evening. The VXR Festival Lahore, titled “Between the Prompts // V.1”, opened at the Alliance Française de Lahore, bringing together artists, creative practitioners and audiences to explore where art meets immersive technology. Works by 70 artists from Pakistan, Spain, France, Canada, the United States and other countries are on show across Lahore and Islamabad.

Sixteen artists were featured on the opening day, including Amna Tariq, Anusha Khalid, Asma Kazmi, Mansoor Ali and Sana Akram from Pakistan, alongside Lola Zoido, Marie Lienhard, Sandrine Deumier and Jérémy Griffaud from abroad. Through the afternoon, visitors stepped into immersive artworks through headsets and screens, then met the artists behind them.

A headset, not a game
Co-curator Sarah Rajper said most people who walked in had never put on a headset to experience art before. “For most people who walked in today, this was the first time they had put on a headset to experience art, not a game or a demo. Watching that moment happen again and again, people going quiet and then turning to whoever was next to them to talk about what they’d seen, made the months of work worth it.” Festival founder Dr Najamul Assar said the response showed audiences here had been ready for it. One visitor put it more simply: “I expected technology, but what stayed with me was how personal it felt. Standing inside someone’s memory of a Karachi home, I forgot I was wearing anything at all.”

Inside Monet’s Water Lilies
The headline attraction is the Claude Monet VR experience, presented in Pakistan for the first time through the Institut français collection. It carries visitors from the artist’s garden at Giverny into his Water Lilies at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. Jérémy Griffaud’s Under the Sky animates nearly 300 watercolour paintings made in Borneo, while Faqeha Nadeem’s Every Day uses augmented reality to bring the pages of a hand-drawn sketchbook to life.

From Lahore to Islamabad
The festival continues in Lahore until November 11, moves to Beaconhouse National University on November 12, and then travels to Islamabad, where its programme runs from November 13 to 15. Entry is free. It is presented with the support of the French and Spanish embassies, Alliance Française, the Institut français and AECID, in collaboration with UNESCO. Curated by Dr Najamul Assar and Sarah Rajper, the VXR Festival is an initiative of the Lahore Digital Arts Festival team, which has supported digital art and creative technology in Pakistan since 2019.