About

This short story is about a writer who finds it so difficult to write about herself.

Jan Stanlav, a pen name of Stanislaus Yangni, born in Indonesia in 1982, is an independent author and thinker. As an exceptional writer with an unusual life, she makes her life a source of philosophical thinking and finds that the thinking process is naturally juxtaposed with madness.

She studied psychology at Faculty of Psychology Sanata Dharma Yogyakarta, Sekolah Tinggi Filsafat Driyarkara Jakarta, and Institut Seni Indonesia in Yogyakarta. After thousands of  years of living in Yogyakarta and living a nomadic lifestyle, she currently lives in Bandung.

She had worked in Jakarta as a journalist for Visual Arts magazine around 2007-2009 when contemporary art was booming, continued her education at Driyarkara School of Philosophy, before returning to Yogyakarta and completing her education at the Indonesian Art Institute. Her essays, art criticism, and exhibition reviews have been published in several mass media, such as Suara Pembaruan, Jakarta Post, and Koran Tempo. She worked as an editor at local magazine, Mata Jendela.

A patriarchal landscape of families influenced her works. Themes like sexuality, loss and relationship, identity, human isolation, relation between  the eternal and the temporary, human mobility and migration become her concern. She is always fascinated about journeys into nowhere.

Besides writing, she also does photography, painting, works as a freelance graphic designer, and created an artisan business in late 2018, Papier & Herbs.

Her published books were Dari Khaos Ke Khaosmos; Estetika Seni Rupa (2012), Tiga Venus dan tentang Seni Yang Enggan Selesai (2019),  Waria, Bahasa dan Dunia Malam (2020), and WC KETIGA (2022). By writing she re-examined life in a different way.

Her style of writing is melancholic, detailed, and analytical. She has a style of language not usually found in academic-scientific writing. She merges the conceptual and poetic in a peculiar way.