GIRL ICON

Immersive VR documentary about presence, resilience, and the fight for girls’ education.

Girl Icon was an immersive VR artwork that invited viewers into the lived reality of young women in India fighting for their right to education. Crafted as a first person, emotionally grounded experience, the work used proximity and presence to dissolve distance between audience and subject, creating a space where resilience, dignity, and daily struggle could be felt rather than observed. The piece continued Skye Von’s wider artistic practice of using immersive tools to deepen empathy, shift perception, and honour voices that are often spoken about but rarely heard directly.

GIRL ICON
2019

  • SXSW Film Festival, USA [2018]

    Tribeca Film Festival, USA [2019]

    Sheffield DocFest, UK [2019]

    Additional international festival and educational screenings world-wide [2018–2020]

    Featured in Forbes’ Top 50 XR Experiences [2020]

  • Girl Icon was created with the Malala Fund through Meta’s VR for Good programme and used virtual reality not as spectacle, but as a medium for embodied storytelling. Viewers stood beside the girls as they moved through their homes, communities, and schools, sharing moments of vulnerability, determination, and hope. Skye led the creative development, shaping the narrative, experiential framing, and participatory research to ensure the film remained grounded in lived experience and centred the girls’ perspectives without filtering or flattening their complexity.
    The film premiered at SXSW and went on to screen at Tribeca, Sheffield DocFest, and other international festivals. It was later recognised in Forbes’ Top 50 XR Experiences, contributing to global awareness of the Malala Fund’s work and demonstrating how immersive art can amplify social impact through emotional truth.

Across its development and exhibition, Girl Icon reflected Skye’s enduring belief that immersive storytelling can expand empathy by allowing audiences to inhabit another’s world, even briefly. By bringing viewers into close proximity with the girls’ voices and aspirations, the work transformed documentary into an encounter, reinforcing that education is not an abstract issue but a deeply human one. As part of Skye’s continuing practice, Girl Icon remains a touchstone in her exploration of how narrative, presence, and care can reshape understanding and inspire collective responsibility.

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