Lendl Tellington's portfolio

Work samples

The Age Of All Women: The Becoming of Younousse Seye

Following the career of Younousse Seye, Senegal’s first female contemporary artist, this project consists of a film, art catalogue and exhibition which examine the contingencies that govern the remembrance of Black women artists.

This an excerpt from a feature documentary
...that's why He made momma

As they realize they could lose their matriarch's home, a brother and sister, Lendl and Salome turn the camera on their great-grandmother, Nannie, and her nine descendants in order to reimagine their family’s legacy.
As the siblings sift through memories and history, they chronicle the ingenuity of generational single black motherhood and grapple with its inheritance.

This an excerpt from a feature documentary
Dos Noemis

The story of 2 women who united agricultural migrant workers in rural New York; ultimately creating the State's first Farmworkers' Union.
Arien

A portrait of performance artist Arien Wilkerson visually examining the line between eroticism and liberation.

About Lendl

Lendl Tellington is a filmmaker and visual artist who tinkers with time like music—remixing the line between prescribed histories and collective memory. Working across cinema, photography, and installation, he illuminates the ingenious ways communities forge their own systems of value beyond institutional recognition. His practice refuses to separate fiction from non-fiction, deploying each to expose what the other conceals.

Using only equipment essential to the… more

View Lendl's Resume

The Age of All Women

Senegal’s first female contemporary artist and legendary actress Younousse Seye hasn’t had an exhibition in 30 years, or a film release in 50 years leaving her repetopire largerly forgotten. Seye details her life and career spanning Senegal's colonization, independence all the while being an unabashed Pan-African feminist .

The Age Of All Women: The Becoming of Younousse Seye

Following the career of Younousse Seye, Senegal’s first female contemporary artist, this project consists of a film, art catalogue and exhibition which examine the contingencies that govern the remembrance of Black women artists.

This an excerpt from a feature documentary

...that's why he made momma

...that's Why He Made Momma

...that's Why He Made Momma is a feature documentary and immersive exhibition that reimagines how Black families define legacy beyond property ownership. Co-directed by siblings Lendl Tellington and Salome Sykes.

The Film

When siblings Lendl and Salome realize they could lose their matriarch's home, they turn the camera on their great-grandmother Nannie and her nine descendants to reimagine their family's legacy—chronicling the ingenuity of generational single Black motherhood and grappling with what inheritance becomes after losing property.

The Exhibition

The accompanying gallery experience transforms family vestiges into immersive installation through sensory environments, photography, and cinematic vignettes. Created during Lendl's residency at Creative Alliance (2020-2023), the exhibition allows audiences to physically inhabit the family's memoryscape, extending the film's exploration of how wisdom becomes inheritance when property is lost.

Together, film and exhibition model self-determined storytelling that challenges who gets to tell family histories and how they're preserved. The project's broader mission inspires other families—particularly families of color—to document their own narratives, demonstrating that the act of preservation itself becomes a form of legacy creation and resistance.

...that's why He made momma

As they realize they could lose their matriarch's home, a brother and sister, Lendl and Salome turn the camera on their great-grandmother, Nannie, and her nine descendants in order to reimagine their family’s legacy.
As the siblings sift through memories and history, they chronicle the ingenuity of generational single black motherhood and grapple with its inheritance.

This an excerpt from a feature documentary
The Good Table– a part of ...thats why he made momma exhibition

utilizing video projections atop vintage furniture and fabrics from my great grandmother's collection, this piece repurposes our great-grandmother's dining room table as a portal for familial memories.
Times change – a part of ...thats why he made momma exhibition

family archives, illustrations and photography of various Baltimore building facades create an immersive collage thats projected at large scale immersing audiences into familial memories revealing both the warmth of generational single black otherhood as well as the gendered and racial bias across 8 decades
Return

Our great-grandmother was born to a sharecropping family. Their family bed was bales of hay. 85 years she would pass on in her bed in her home atop 6 acres property only a town over from where she was born. Using bales of hay and my great-grandmother's last bed headboard, this pieece serves as a sculptural eulogy to our matriarch.
Viewfinder

photos show the mourning process after the death of our matriarch showing all of the matriarch women descendants. under the cascading fabric is a video looping images of the family sole male descendant nodding to gendered bias even within a family of loved one.

Dos Noemis

2 women with the same first name built an alliance that mobilized agricultural workers to create New York’s first farm workers Union.

Dos Noemis

The story of 2 women who united agricultural migrant workers in rural New York; ultimately creating the State's first Farmworkers' Union.

Dancing Despite

Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela is a writer, poet, and musician whose work is concerned with little-told histories, Mexican American migration and incarceration. Dancing Despite nods to the necessity to live life regardless of the circumstances at hand. This music video frames the song’s mantra around the artist’s own motherhood. Filmed in a slow motion single take highlighting the gravity of even the most quotidian gestures.

Dancing Despite

Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela is a writer, poet, and musician whose work is concerned with little-told histories, Mexican American migration and incarceration. Dancing Despite nods to the necessity to live life regardless of the circumstances at hand. This music video frames the song’s mantra around the artist’s own motherhood. Filmed in a slow motion single take highlighting the gravity of even the most quotidian gestures.

fearfully and woefully made

Lendl Tellington presents fearfully and wonderfully made, a collection of new works that explores how ideas about masculinity shape the roles we repeatedly perform throughout life. At its center is Abner, a short documentary that uncovers buried secrets about the artist's great-great-grandfather through stories passed down across generations, revealing how one man's struggles echo long after he's gone. A series of self-portraits in which Tellington recreates iconic photographs of Black men from the past sixty years, drawing unexpected connections across different expressions of Black masculinity, time, and culture.

Abner

Abner, a short documentary that uncovers buried secrets about the artist's great-great-grandfather through stories passed down across generations, revealing how one man's struggles echo long after he's gone.
Reformation

black person dressed in priest robe seated at desk with lamp and cross on wall, drinking
Old Dog
SlysaacChains
dressed like a million bucks
X
Light reading

Time Is The Essence

Verb Tec & Vanderslice - Time Is of the Essence (Music Video)

Emcee Verb Tec return to his childhood home in Baltimore and reflects on his upbringing by his mother and grandmother while bearing that same rite of parentage now a father to two sons.