“The apartment in Miami is a three-bedroom-two-bathroom-first-floor unit with beige carpet and a dark green front door with specks of dried blood on it. The son’s room has wallpaper and the daughter’s room is painted lavender and the mother’s room has a closet full of two-inch leather belts. The son has a GameCube and a PlayStation 2. The daughter has a container full of plastic dolls. It is hot, and on every wall one can find at least one black sugar ant. The kitchen has Tupperware containers stained orange from spaghetti, and there are drain moth larvae in the kids’ bathroom sink. Look up the address on Google Images now. Select the 2011 view. Would you believe me if I told you the building used to be a different color? I never had a bedroom because I was living there for a little while. Seven years is a little while. Everyone, do you remember me? Could you remember me?”

Pond is pleased to announce our fourth exhibition, You said it never happened but our home was an anthill, by artist Akeylah Imani Wellington. Centered around her mother Thomasina’s baby book, lost between the years 2002 and 2009, Akeylah Wellington’s exhibition of pony bead tapestries blends childhood memories with jean pocket embroidery, hurricane Wilma satellite coverage, poems, and visual culture from the aughts. Wellington’s work is informed by her former status as a ward to a family in south Florida during her mother’s incarceration in Louisiana. By collaging disparate images woven from pony beads, a common hair accessory in Black braided styles, Wellington attempts to make sense of carceral-related displacement, loss, and recollection. 

Join us Friday night, October 25th, from 5:30 - 8:00 PM to celebrate Akeylah Imani Wellington’s solo exhibition. Wellington will be giving a talk in the gallery on Saturday, October 26th at noon. The talk is free and coffee will be provided - please arrive a few minutes early!

Akeylah Imani Wellington remembers when Xpression sold 88” packs of hair unstretched. Her sculptural and textile work concerns itself with the aughts, ironies, poor lucks, and humor as both a noun and a verb. In addition to completing a Winter Residency at The Wassaic Project, her work has been shown at Dream Clinic Project Space in Columbus, OH and Stop-Gap projects in Columbia, MO. She received her MFA from The Ohio State University and is an artist and educator based in Columbus, OH.