EXHIBITION STATEMENT

What lies beyond the threshold? Artist Brooke Einbender transforms AutoShop at Union Market DC into an immersive meditation on passage and possibility, where reclaimed doors become luminous portals into the space between certainty and change.

The Unknown Zone emerges from a profound understanding: our most significant transformations happen not in moments of clarity, but in the uncomfortable pause between what was and what’s yet to be. Einbender's installation invites visitors to inhabit this liminal space, a realm charged with mystery, discomfort, and possibility, to find beauty in uncertainty and power in transition.

For Einbender, The Unknown Zone is not only an art series, it is a personal philosophy and a way of approaching both life and creativity. Doors symbolize transformation: boundaries and invitations, endings and beginnings, the seen and unseen. When we look back on our lives, we often realize it was the closing of one door that ultimately led us to the people we became. The threshold, the moment between opening and closing, is where true growth happens.

This installation is part of Einbender’s ongoing Unknown Zone series, which first emerged during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the world retreated behind closed doors, Brooke began reflecting on the symbolism of thresholds—how moments of isolation and upheaval often mark deep personal transformation. In response, she started collecting reclaimed doors from her community in Telluride, Colorado, reimagining them as vibrant, kaleidoscopic portals into the unknown.

Since then, The Unknown Zone has been exhibited across the United States, including a solo exhibition during Art Basel Miami, a permanent installation at CampV in Colorado, a public art installation in the mountains of Telluride, and a TEDx talk. Her portals are also collected and held in private art collections across the country.