VXR Festival opens at PNCA with Virtual Reality Art showcase

ISLAMABAD, Nov 13 (APP): The Virtual and Extended Reality (VXR) Festival opened on Friday at the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA), bringing Pakistani and international artists together with art enthusiasts, students and the wider public.

The festival was formally inaugurated in the evening by Ambassador of France to Pakistan, Jean-Noël Poirier in the presence of diplomats, cultural representatives, artists and members of the public.

Director General of PNCA, Ayoub Jamali welcomed the distinguished guests as the host of the venue, alongside Zakaria Haffar, French Cultural Attaché. Visitors used VR headsets to explore digital environments created by artists from Pakistan and abroad.

The Islamabad edition, titled Between the Prompts, is curated by festival director Dr. Najam Ul Assar and co-curator Sarah Rajper, with Zainab Amir as assistant curator.

“Extended reality usually reaches us as a finished product, built elsewhere and sold here,” said Dr. Assar. “This edition asks what happens when artists from Rawalpindi, Lahore, Paris, Madrid and Berkeley take hold of the medium, and the headset becomes a space for memory, critique and play rather than consumption.”

“Each city we travel to becomes part of the curatorial conversation,” said co-curator Sarah Rajper. “At PNCA, we wanted Islamabad audiences to experience immersive art not as something imported from elsewhere, but as a shared space where artists from here and abroad explore questions of memory, presence and belonging.”

Featuring the work of over 70 artists, VXR brings together Pakistani and international practitioners exploring the creative possibilities of virtual and extended reality. The festival encourages audiences to engage with emerging technologies not merely as consumers but as participants in artistic expression, critical thinking and cultural exchange.

The festival is organised by the Lahore Digital Arts Festival team, with the support of its international cultural partners, including the Embassy of France, the Embassy of Spain, Institut Français, and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID).
VXR is a travelling festival without a permanent venue. Following its week-long programme in Lahore and its Islamabad edition, the festival will move to Karachi.
Through exhibitions and immersive experiences, the festival offers a platform to explore questions of memory, identity, imagination and the changing relationship between humans and technology.