Nayara Nascimento is a Brazilian-born, Canada-based sculptural artist, designer, theorist, 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 currents inside form.
Over time, this way of working evolved into what she now calls The Dissonance Method. The method itself is a broader research inquiry into how tension, intuition, and multi-layered perception shape understanding; her sculptural practice is one of the places where it becomes visible. In the studio, this takes the form of a process that 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 technique, but an ongoing negotiation between intention and what the material reveals in the act of making.Through aeny studio, she creates objects that hold what words often can’t.
