Avianti Armand

Biography

The poetry collection “Perempuan yang Dihapus Namanya” came out in 2010, and a year later it won the Khatulistiwa Literary Award in the poetry category. The prize was shared: Nirwan Dewanto received it together with Avianti Armand, for his book “Buli-Buli Lima Kaki”. The poems in her collection are built on material from the Old Testament.

She was born on 12 July 1969 in Jakarta. She turned to literature young: her poems and stories appeared in various Indonesian publications. Her first collection of short stories, “Negeri Para Peri” (“The Land of the Fairies”), was published in 1999; one of the stories won the Kompas newspaper award for best short story of 2009. There is another prose collection, “Kereta Tidur”. From 2008 she wrote noticeably more. Later came the poetry collections “Buku Tentang Ruang” and “Museum Masa Kecil”; for the second she won the Khatulistiwa award again in 2018. Her architecture columns are collected in the book “Arsitektur yang Lain”.

She has worked as an architect since 1992. A house she designed received an award from the Indonesian Institute of Architects in 2008. She teaches as a guest lecturer: architecture at the University of Indonesia and interior design at Pelita Harapan University.

She turned to exhibitions and curating in 2010. That year she conceived the workshop and exhibition “Ruang Tinggal Dalam Kota” (“Living Space in the City”) at the Salihara arts community and became curator of an exhibition of young Indonesian architects. In 2014 she led the team of curators for the Indonesian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale; the theme of the display was “Craftsmanship: Material Consciousness”. In 2015 she chaired the design committee at the Frankfurt Book Fair and was one of the curators of the exhibition of Indonesian architecture “Tropicality: Revisited” at the German Architecture Museum (Deutsches Architekturmuseum) in Frankfurt.

In the same year, 2015, she launched a programme called “Public Toilets in Public Space”, which invited Jakarta architects to design such toilets free of charge. This led to her work in 2016, when she coordinated eleven architectural firms designing 123 child-friendly integrated public spaces (RPTRA) in Jakarta.

In 2016 she was an Asian Cultural Council fellow and studied museums and architectural archives in the United States. In 2017, together with Setiadi Sopandi, Nadia Purwestri and Ria Febrian, she founded the Indonesian Architecture Museum. It exists as the website arsitekturindonesia.org, a repository of archival material on Indonesian architecture.

From 2020 to 2023 she sat on the literature committee of the Jakarta Arts Council and created the literary criticism website tengara.id. She was also executive director of the Jakarta International Literary Festival in 2020, 2022, 2025 and 2026.

For children she writes a bilingual series about empathy. Four books have appeared: “Daddy Has A Secret”, “One Hair One Angel”, “Granny Loves To Dance” and “He Says The Nicest Thing”. The last was included in the 2025 IBBY Selection of Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities.