WHAT'S ON - Warehouse 421
Art Salon Team- Apr 28
- 3 min read
Ana Escobar Saavedra
It Starts Where It Ends
18 MAY - 7 SEPT 2025
Ana Escobar Saavedra’s first solo exhibition, It Starts Where It Ends, explores the nuances of identity and identification. Through installations and artifacts that serve as repositories of data, memory, and social constructions, Escobar Saavedra examines where the self exists—both within and beyond the physical body—while navigating the tensions between permanence and impermanence, presence and absence.
At the core of the exhibition is a linguistic and philosophical duality drawn from her mother tongue: ser and estar, two Spanish verbs that both mean “to be.” Ser refers to what is inherent, while estar speaks to the temporary. These concepts underpin her practice, shaping an exploration of the tensions between different aspects of being.
Escobar Saavedra’s body of work is deeply rooted in materiality, with a particular focus on marble and granite—materials traditionally associated with historical preservation. By carving and reshaping these stones, she disrupts their conventional function, instead using them to reflect the body and skin’s form as vessels of change, capturing their evolving textures, scars and color over time. Through meticulous labor, she creates a sense of “preciousness” in overlooked objects and materials while revealing the fragility within forms typically seen as enduring. In doing so, she challenges conventional notions of value and longevity, examining the ways in which materiality itself holds memory.
Her work also interrogates the liminal space between the personal and the bureaucratic, exploring how identity is both a structured construct and an evolving experience. She engages with standardized forms—identification documents, certificates, lockets—reimagining them in ways that question their impermanence and the systems that define them. Through acts of containment, both literal and symbolic, she reflects on how names, dates, photographs and official records shape our existence from birth to death. By fragmenting these familiar markers of identity, she blurs the boundary between the personal and the institutional, prompting reflection on whether our identities are shaped more by documentation or by memory. Her work resists linearity, embracing cycles of meaning that continuously fold back on themselves.
The cyclical nature of Escobar Saavedra’s work is reflected in the exhibition’s title, It Starts Where It Ends, a phrase that speaks to the transcendence of identity. Just as her work resists linear narratives, her own name—Ana—forms a palindrome, beginning and ending in the same place, mirroring the human negotiation of what it means to be.
Ana Escobar Saavedra is participating in the 2025 cycle of the 421 Artistic Development Program (ADP), mentored by Jolaine Frizzell. ADP is an annual capacity-building initiative that provides early-career artists in the UAE with the opportunity to explore new techniques, test ideas, and create a cohesive body of work for their first solo exhibition.
About Warehouse 421
421 Arts Campus is an independent platform dedicated to emerging artists and creative practitioners in the UAE and across the region. A site for research, learning and experimentation, 421 provides a nurturing environment for emergent creative practices and those who want to harness the arts as an agent for social inquiry and transformation. 421 encourages practitioners to explore the potential of public spaces as a means for progress and community engagement through a wide-ranging programmatic model that facilitates artistic exchange and critical dialogue.
Located in Abu Dhabi’s Mina Zayed, 421 presents a year-round program of exhibitions, talks, workshops, special events and educational initiatives that offer accessible learning opportunities to the wider community and the general public. Many of the 421 programs are organized in collaboration with local, regional and international partners, engaging children, students, educators, and creative professionals in a participatory approach to artistic and creative practice. These programs are designed to develop artistic and creative skills, supporting the growth of the UAE’s creative ecosystem.
(Source: https://www.421.online/about/)
Opening Hours:
Tuesday - Sunday, 10 am - 8 pm
Monday's Closed
Address: Zayed Port - Mina Zayed - Abu Dhabi
