Quimera: Vanessa Saavedra at 516 ARTS

Vanessa Saavedra’s Quimera exhibition considers the U.S.–Mexico border as a site of contradiction: where proximity and separation, hope and disillusionment, movement and delay converge. Through scenes of waiting, transit, surveillance, and everyday life, Vanessa Saavedra’s Quimera considers the distance between the promise of the American Dream and the realities from which that promise is imagined. The exhibition brings together works from Saavedra’s Realidades fronterizas (Border Realities) series alongside new collaborative works that consider the border as a lived and shifting condition.

Image: Vanessa Saavedra and Athena Solan Apodaca, El Ensueño, 2026. Tarp, paint, pastels, serape, remnants of traditional folk attire, yarn, thread, ribbon, fabric, and photographs, 68” x 51”. Image courtesy of the artist.