Kohana Wilson

edith and the tall child

A hand-drawn film about trans memory, gender dysphoria and hair.

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Realising my own gender identity felt so monumental that I felt that all iterations of my past selves had to die in its wake. It felt like there was no room to host my “untrue”, “dishonest” past – a past where I did not have the vocabulary nor the space to realise what gender identifiers I felt comfortable with. During this memorably anxious moment, I wanted to create character relationships in my animated work that could outwardly demonstrate this guilt. A character that looks like me will be used to represent myself as I live presently (as the genderless ‘tall child’), and their reckoning with past selves and what gender has looked like to them in their memory is manifested through their interactions with a creature modelled after a ground sloth: an extinct, lumbering animal intended to shoulder the roles of guardian and protector while, compromisingly, serving as a painful reminder of the character’s past self. Her name will be Edith. Throughout the film we will watch the main character resist transformation into a ground sloth until they themselves transform into one, revealing that Edith and the tall child are more than mere roommates. They are painfully coming to terms with their shared commonality and existence in eachother’s lives.

Website: kohanawilson.com

Instagram: @floralgunk