Barbara Visser (Haarlem, The Netherlands, 1966) is a visual artist, filmmaker and educator with a broad experience in education and policy making, living in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Her work focuses on cultural and historical narratives and how time and context influence our perception on information. Her works, often cinematic and conscious of their context, address the uncertain relationship between registration and dramatization. Authentic and constructed realities merge and are thus challenging existing modes of storytelling and image-making. By questioning our memory and belief systems, Visser aims to provoke a new perception of what normality has rendered invisible.

She was chair of the Arts section of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences 2014 – 2017, Artistic Director of IDFA (a.i. 2017) and initiator and head of the Temporary Master Program F for Fact at Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam, 2020 – 2024.