Latvian animator, illustrator and writer Signe Baumane, born in Auce in 1964, has built her career in New York City. Besides animation, she is a fine artist who has made paintings and sculptures, and she is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
She grew up in Latvia and on Sakhalin Island and studied philosophy at Moscow University, graduating in 1989. That year she began working as an animator, and in 1991 she made her first animated film, The Witch and the Cow. After moving to New York in 1995 she worked with Bill Plympton, and since 1998 she has worked as an independent animator.
Her best-known work is Rocks in My Pockets (2014), an autobiographical feature about the depression that has haunted three generations of women in her family. Mixing traditional animation with papier-mâché and stop-motion, it won the FIPRESCI prize at Karlovy Vary. Her second feature, My Love Affair with Marriage (2022), explores love and social pressure through science and music.
Her personal narration and flat, hand-drawn style tackle difficult subjects such as sex and depression with irony and humour, often through visual metaphors. In 2017 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship.