Kohana Wilson (they/them) is a 2D animator, director, and teacher. They were born and raised in Hong Kong, and currently live in Brooklyn, NY. They are a part-time lecturer in the Illustration department at the Parsons School of Design, where they teach animation and drawing classes.
Their animation practice involves a slow and iterative frame-by-frame hand-drawn process, often using pencil and paper with digital coloring. They enjoy presenting surreal worlds on a tilt, and playing with asymmetrical timing, elastic characters, and nonsense gravity. Their animations feel restless, dense, and poetic, inspired by keen observations of the natural world.
Their Academy Award long-listed film 'edith and the tall child' - a film about hair, gender dysphoria, and the growing pains of a repeating puberty - won Slamdance’s Grand Jury Prize for Animated Shorts, and has been screened internationally at festivals such as Fantoche, London International Animation Festival, and Bitbang.
They direct and animate a variety of commissioned projects, including music videos, documentaries, short films and commercials. Their previous clients include Adult Swim, Netflix, Blinkink, MoMA, Atlantic Records, and more. They’ve worked on EMMY-nominated and ANNIE-winning productions, and have recently created music videos for Coldplay, Florist, Flipturn, Ethan Bortnick, The Backseat Lovers, and more. They have been awarded artist residencies with Yaddo, The Sitka Center, and the Peaked Hill Trust for the development of their upcoming hand-drawn feature film, Skywriter.
Email: wilsonkohana@gmail.com
Instagram: @kohana.wilson
Vimeo: @Kohana Wilson
*photos by Myu Inoue.