Sanja Manakoski is an artist and educator originally from Belgrade, Serbia, now based in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. Her work grows out of a lifelong interest in drawing, people, costume, movement, and visual storytelling.

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She studied Costume and Fashion Design at the University of Applied Arts in Belgrade, where drawing, research, textiles, and character became closely connected in her practice. Later, an invitation to continue her studies brought her to Chicago, where she completed an MFA at Northwestern University and developed a deeper focus on theatre, collaborative design and teaching.

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Over the years, Sanja has moved between fashion, costume, theatre, film, illustration, and fine art. She co-created the award-winning fashion label KLASA, received an ULUPUDS Design Award, and presented work at the Prague Quadrennial. Her professional theatre work was recognized with the Michael Merritt Award, and she was featured by American Theatre Magazine in its “6 Theatre Workers You Should Know” series.

Although her background is broad, drawing has remained a constant throughout. She has always been especially drawn to the early stages of a project: reading, researching, observing, sketching, and finding the visual language of a character or idea.

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Teaching gradually became another important part of that process. Sanja has taught drawing and design at the university level, including undergraduate and graduate students at Northwestern University, and later founded My Art Academia, an online art school that has now taught thousands of young artists.

​Her approach to teaching is deeply shaped by her own experience as a student and by the professors who gave her both technical discipline and the freedom to experiment. She sees art as a visual language — a way of communicating ideas, emotions, identity, and experiences that can sometimes be difficult to put into words. She is especially interested in how learning that language can help young artists build confidence, trust their own ideas, and gradually develop a visual voice of their own.​

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Today, her personal practice is moving increasingly toward drawing, watercolor, illustration, and fine art. Her work continues to return to people, expression, identity, movement, and the quiet details that make one figure different from another.