421 Arts Campus Presents Spring Exhibitions: Ana Escobar Saavedra: It Starts Where It Ends and Unstable Grounds: NYUAD MFA Graduate Exhibition 2025
Opening on May 18, the exhibitions feature works by emerging artists exploring material memory, the evolution of identity, migration, community, and belonging
Image courtesy of Ana Escobar Saavedra and 421 Arts Campus. Photography by The Frei.
We are pleased to present the Spring 2025 exhibitions Ana Escobar Saavedra: It Starts Where It Ends and Unstable Grounds: NYUAD MFA Graduate Exhibition 2025. Opening on May 18 and on view until September 7, the exhibitions take place inside 421’s Galleries 1 and 2 respectively, with expansive inquiries into themes of human identity, memory, and our connection to the environment and one another.
“We are proud to present two impactful art exhibitions that offer a unique and integrated perspective on the concepts of identity, memory, and place. The exhibition Ana Escobar Saavedra: It Starts Where It Ends marks the artist’s first solo show, resulting from the 421 Artistic Development Program. Her work invites us to consider the cyclical nature of the self and material memory, with thoughtful explorations rooted in language, form, and personal history.” said Faisal Al Hassan, Director of 421 Arts Campus.
“Our other exhibition, Unstable Grounds: NYUAD MFA Graduate Exhibition 2025, marks four years of partnership with New York University Abu Dhabi’s MFA program. This season, we present a selection of artists from diverse cultures, united by their creative practices in exploring the complexities of displacement, belonging, and environmental transformation," He added: "Through these new exhibitions, we invite our community to contemplate the ways in which the world around us is shaped, and how we, in turn, shape it."
“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 a final outcome,” said Mays Albaik, Manager of Programs and Community Initiatives. “We are proud to support artists like Ana Escobar Saavedra, whose debut solo exhibition is proof of the importance of sustained research and practice.”
“Additionally, we invite our community to join us and explore the work made by this year’s MFA graduate cohort at NYUAD. Unstable Grounds: NYUAD MFA Graduate Exhibition 2025 features photography, sculpture, performance, and more, they challenge boundaries while grounding their practices in the landscapes and histories of West Asia.”
Ana Escobar Saavedra: It Starts Where It Ends
Part of the Artistic Development Program
May 18 - September 7, 2025
Gallery 1
In her debut solo exhibition, artist Ana Escobar Saavedra 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 practice.
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.
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.
This exhibition is presented as part of the 421 Artistic Development Program, an annual capacity-building initiative that supports early-career artists in the UAE, giving them opportunity to explore new techniques, test ideas, and create a cohesive body of work for their first solo exhibition. The program is facilitated by Jolaine Frizzell. The artist was mentored by Nada Raza, and Érica Martínez Cuervo during her time in the program.
Unstable Grounds: NYUAD MFA Graduate Exhibition 2025
Group exhibition
May 18 - September 7, 2025
Gallery 2
Unstable Grounds brings together the work of eight graduating artists from the Master of Fine Arts in Art and Media at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), marking the fourth consecutive year of collaboration between 421 Arts Campus and the university.
Featuring Dima Abou Zannad, Bao, Adele Bea Cipste, Hala El Abora, Mowen Li (Amira), Jude Maharmeh, Safeya Sharif, and Danutė Vaitekūnaitė, this cohort explores the interplay between environment, displacement, migration, memory, and human connection through a wide range of media including photography, drawing, mixed media, installation, video, sculpture, painting, printmaking, and performance.
The works on view trace ecological and economic cycles, reimagine origin stories, and probe the politics of belonging in environments shaped by displacement. While this cohort is diverse and international, their practices are deeply grounded in local specificity, responding to the landscapes, urban environments, commercial exchange zones, and creative histories of West Asia. Like past cohorts, they have advanced their material and conceptual inquiries through theoretical and archival approaches.
Through Unstable Grounds, 421 and NYUAD reaffirm their commitment to nurturing emerging contemporary practices and providing platforms for post-graduate work in the region and beyond.
This exhibition also pays tribute to the late Tarek Al-Ghoussein (1962–2022), professor, mentor, and artist, whose legacy continues to guide and inspire the MFA program at NYUAD.