Akeylah Imani Wellington
Pecha Projects is pleased to present soft power, akeylah wellington’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. In new, large-scale bead tapestries and curtains curated by Reg Zehner, wellington explores a confluence of Black cosmologies, craft, and satellite space observation. The exhibition references the international studies term referring to a nation’s nonviolent influence through economic, scientific advancement, or cultural exchange. wellington deploys custom designed, handmade upright tapestry looms and adapted tools to represent a glittery, celestial field made of quasars, supernovae, and lens aberrations.
wellington’s works are woven with pony beads, a traditional accessory to braided hairstyles. In soft power, she applies her glitchy, crafty, Web-inspired visual language to grainy, pixelated Hubble Space telescope images captured between 1990 and 2009. Tapestries typically record familial or national histories. This body of work engages the history of astronomical drawings, memetic images of space, and those pictures made as evidence of surveillance rather than appreciation. The series is a departure from her earlier text-based tapestries, but utilizes her characteristic palette: transparent hues, chromatic neutrals, and faceted beads in unexpected places. She treats each bead as a discrete unit of light and color and a pixel of her generation’s memory of aerospace technology.
akeylah wellington (b. 1998) is an emerging sculptor and tapestry maker from the South. Her work is concerned with humor as both a noun connoting comedy, and a verb meaning to endure. Her attention to aughts era-specific technological and political developments is an attempt to make sense of her experience of carceral displacement, loss, girlhood, generational inheritances, and time. Her work has been shown at Blah Blah Gallery (Philadelphia, PA) The Anderson (Richmond, VA), and Pond Gallery (Fayetteville, AR). She is a former artist-in-residence of Visible Records and Wassaic Project and a 2025 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award recipient.
Reg Zehner is a writer, DJ/producer, social media specialist, and organizer based in New Jersey. Originally from Columbus, Ohio, Zehner has curated multiple exhibitions in the region, including at 934 Gallery, No Place Gallery, and Beeler Gallery. They also served as the first Path Fellow at the Wexner Center for the Arts. Their work centers Black trans and queer communities, focusing on creating spaces for expression. Zehner currently works as the Senior Social Media Coordinator at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
soft power opens to the public on January 16, 2026. It’s opening reception begins at 5 PM and ends at 8 PM. The exhibition will close on March 20, 2026. We welcome visitors during gallery hours: Wednesday through Friday, 11 AM to 5 PM, and weekends 1 PM to 5 PM. Private appointments are available via request.