Zaiba Jabbar makes things happen. As an award-winning director, commissioner, mentor, independent curator, and founder of the curatorial agency Hervisions, she’s something of a polymath in the world of digital art.
Established in 2015, Hervisions is a femme-focused agency and platform working at the vanguard of XR, Web3, NFTs, digital art, and the metaverse. It was originally initiated by Jabbar as an enquiry into how innovations in technology are enabling marginalised artists to make work outside the conventional mediums and established spaces of the art world. Supporting art made in these non-traditional realms remains its guiding principle. In a recent statement she shared with Dazed, Jabbar explained, “I’m interested in the democratisation of art and the new accessibility by which we experience art outside the white cube.”
Through Hervisions and her independent projects beyond the agency, Jabbar’s practice exists at the point in which art and culture intersect with technology. She works with artists using augmented reality and digital art to create arresting experiences offline and online. Among many collaborations with brands and institutions – including Tate Modern, arebyte gallery, bitforms gallery, LNCC and The London College of Fashion to name just a few – a recent highlight includes Open Space, an augmented reality initiative curated by Jabbar in conjunction with The Photographer’s Gallery. Alongside three site-specific public AR artworks, the programme – which will continue running until March 2023 – offered six emerging artists the opportunity to experiment with augmented reality through a series of mentoring workshops, as well as the chance to exhibit their work on The Photographer’s Gallery website.
As a visionary facilitating the connection between art and tech, Jabber’s role only looks set to grow in relation to the scope and pace of technological advancement.
Text Emily Dinsdale
