Velta Emīlija Platupe is a Latvian visual artist, screenwriter and emerging animation director whose work brings together painting, animation, theatre and socially engaged art. Trained in Latvia and France, she holds Master's degrees from the Art Academy of Latvia and the École Supérieure d'Arts & Médias de Caen/Cherbourg.

 

Her artistic practice explores symbolic storytelling, mythology and psychological realism, transforming themes such as childhood, vulnerability, historical memory and the full spectrum of human emotion into richly imagined visual worlds. Whether working with paintings, puppets or animation, she is interested in how visual metaphor transforms difficult human experiences into places of wonder.

 

Following her directorial debut with the hand-drawn animated short Pauline's Story, Platupe is currently developing her first feature-length film, Hungry Street—an animated dramatic fairy tale exploring poverty, childhood and resilience. The project was previously developed with producer Vilnis Kalnaellis and RIJA Films and was presented at the France–Baltic co-production workshop in Paris.

 

Alongside her artistic practice, Platupe works as an art educator, including at the Children's Clinical University Hospital in Riga, where years of working with children have shaped her understanding of imagination as a source of resilience, informing both her visual language and storytelling.

 

Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions, theatre productions, concerts and interdisciplinary collaborations in Latvia, France, Italy and beyond. In 2026, she became the cover artist and illustrator for the literary and art magazine Dēkla, and her series Angels as Models was selected for the international CARE Catalogue, an initiative celebrating artistic practices centred on care, empathy and social interaction.

 

Originally trained as a painter, Platupe approaches animation as moving painting, where colour, texture and composition are as important to storytelling as dialogue. She believes imagination is not an escape from reality, but one of the ways human beings survive it.