It starts where it ends

421 Arts Campus, Abu Dhabi’s independent arts space dedicated to supporting emerging creative practices, presents Ana Escobar Saavedra: It Starts Where It Ends, on view until September 7. In this solo exhibition, the artist explores the nuances of identity and identification.

At the heart of her practice lies a philosophical and linguistic duality drawn from her mother tongue: the Spanish verbs ser and estar, both of which mean “to be” yet embody different meanings. One suggests permanence, the other, transience. This conceptual tension can be seen throughout Escobar Saavedra’s work.

Working primarily with marble and granite - materials traditionally associated with historical preservation - Escobar Saavedra reshapes them to reflect the body and skin’s form as vessels of change, capturing their evolving textures, scars, and color over time. Through this process, 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.

421 Arts Campus is an independent arts platform dedicated to emerging artists and creative practitioners in the UAE and across the region. The exhibition is presented as part of 421’s Artistic Development Program (ADP), an annual capability-building initiative that supports early- career artists in the UAE, giving them the opportunity to explore new techniques, test ideas, and create a cohesive body of work for their first solo exhibition.

Through familiar bureaucratic forms, including identification documents and certificates, Escobar Saavedra reimagines how identity is defined and contained, questioning whether we are shaped more by records or by lived experience. Her practice resists linear narratives, embracing cyclical meaning and memory. The exhibition title, It Starts Where It Ends, echoes this cyclical nature of Escobar Saavedra’s inquiry. Like her name—Ana, a palindrome—it begins and ends in the same place.

Faisal Al Hassan, Director of 421 Arts Campus, says: “At 421, we are committed to supporting artists whose practices engage with the questions of our time, those who help us see the world more clearly and imagine it otherwise. Escobar Saavedra’s work speaks powerfully to this mission. It invites us to look closely, to hold complexity, and to ask: what systems shape us, and how might we reshape them in return?”

“One of our priorities at 421 is to support emerging artists and creatives in the UAE and the region. The Artistic Development Program is designed to offer artists the space, time, and resources they need to explore, experiment, and focus on the process of making rather than an outcome,” says Mays Albaik, Manager of Programs and Community Initiatives. “We are proud to support artists like Ana Escobar Saavedra, whose exhibition is proof of the importance of sustained research and practice.”