Nayara Nascimento doesn’t see furniture as an object to be placed in a room—she sees it as a presence, something alive, something that shifts the way we engage with space. Her work is not decoration, nor does it exist purely for function. It is something in between—Functional Sculpture, a dialogue between material, form, and human experience.
Her path wasn’t linear. She studied neuroscience, architecture, and interior design, searching for structure, for answers. But nothing fit—until she realized she had been trying to force herself into systems that were never built for the way she thought. Discovering she was neurodivergent changed everything. Suddenly, the way she saw the world—intuitively, outside of rigid structures—wasn’t something to suppress. It was her greatest strength.
Her process is not one of control, but of surrender. She doesn’t impose a shape onto the material—she allows it to emerge. Using gypsum from drywall remnants, paper pulp, recycled bronze, and whatever else finds its way into her hands, she builds through layers, through mistakes, through discovery. Each surface carries the imprint of that journey—the weight of intuition, the texture of process.
Nascimento’s connection to her Native Brazilian heritage runs through her work, not as nostalgia, but as an ongoing act of reclamation. She pieces together what was lost, reconfigures it, and lets it shape what she creates. Her neurodivergence, too, plays a role—not as a limitation, but as a lens through which she sees the world differently. She embraces what others might reject, and in doing so, transforms the overlooked into something undeniable.
Her pieces are not meant to blend in. They are meant to be felt. To be touched, engaged with, lived with—because the most powerful objects aren’t just things, they are experiences.
