akeylah wellington
loves the smell of Pink. She thinks you probably do, too. Her tapestries and sculptures deal with humor as both a noun connoting comedy and a verb meaning to endure. Working with found media from the 2000s, her attention to technological and political developments is an attempt to make sense of her personal experience of carceral-related displacement, loss, girlhood, generational inheritances, and time.



















small things to consider: unrequited platonic love letters, soft power

a secret
2023 I think about you all the time especially in the morning at the bus stop

Urban Arts Space
I think about you all the time especially in the morning at the bus stop


 wood, vinyl, concrete, southern Loblolly pine, newspaper vending machine, ink on newsprint, fake grass
This is a simulacrum set in Bliss, the unedited, realer-than-real, bluer-than-blue photograph which would later be selected as the default Windows XP background on Microsoft computers. A viewer may sit on a bench advertising Big Joke’s bonding service. Should they know someone in trouble, the number* on the bus billboard bench directs them to a voicemail of my mother, trying (failing) to recall the bail service she used in 2003 when she was arrested in Gretna, Louisiana. The caller might be interested to know an FBI investigation of the dominant Gretna bail bonds service, the owners of which were later discovered to be bribing court judges in West Jefferson Parish courthouse, was happening simultaneously. 

A gallery visitor might feel drawn to a shiny chrome newspaper vending machine and try to purchase a copy of what lies within. The document is a digitally altered Louisiana crime blotter called Justified. Intermixed with rows of deliberately blurred mugshots are a hodge-podge of advertisements: an ad for bail services is followed by an ad for a lawyer which is followed by an ad for a family practice that accepts Medicare which is followed by an ad for a tailor which is followed by a number for anonymous tips which is followed by a call for identifying a suspect which is followed by a promise for a cash reward. There is a “CRAZY BUT FLORIDA” full color center. There is little cohesion between the various ads and graphic design choices; it lacks the glossy sexy design of People or Essence or Vogue. Because of the subject matter and form, it is a reminder of the carceral system as much as it is a series of collages.

*defunct as of 3/20/2024 





for inquiries, please email the gyal at awellingtonart[@]gmail.com