Nayara Nascimento is a Brazilian-born, Canada-based sculptural artist, designer, researcher, and founder of aeny studio. She creates sculptural furniture and lighting using proprietary composites developed through ongoing material research and experimentation, often shaped from recycled and unconventional materials. Each piece is built by hand, layer by layer, through a physical, responsive process shaped by feeling, intuition, and form.
Some works begin with a sketch. Others begin without a clear plan. But none follow a fixed path. They shift as they’re made, becoming a way to hold something: an emotion, a rupture, a moment in time, made tangible through material.
Her background in architecture and interior design provided a foundation in spatial structure, while studies in neuroscience deepened her understanding of perception and the complexity of human experience. The practice is further shaped by her neurodivergence and Indigenous Brazilian heritage, which informs how she listens, to material, memory, and the unspoken aspects of form.
Over time, this approach has evolved into what she refers to as The Dissonance Method: a way of working that welcomes tension, uncertainty, and interruption as part of the creative process. Rather than forcing resolution, the method honours the intelligence of friction. Intuition, material resistance, and emotional nuance become active agents in shaping the work. It is not a step-by-step process, but an ongoing negotiation between what is planned and what reveals itself in the act of making. Through aeny studio, she creates objects that hold what words often can’t.
'My work is a response to a desire to 'switch off' and reconnect with our instinct - a quiet, inexplicable voice inside of us communicating an emotion or feeling that only art or music can convey. In our fast-paced technological world, it seems increasingly vital that we don't render ourselves blind to that deep primal language, so often undervalued'.
