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Review
Sara De Brito Faustino
A Home With No Roof
A Home With No Roof
The artist turns the home of her childhood into both subject and stage. Working at the intersection of installation and photography, she constructs domestic interiors as psychologically charged spaces where intimacy, discomfort, and vulnerability coexist.
Photo © Sara De Brito Faustino
In the project A Home With No Roof, artist Sara De Brito Faustino turns the home of her childhood into both subject and stage. Working at the intersection of installation and image-making, she constructs domestic interiors as psychologically charged environments where intimacy, discomfort, and vulnerability coexist within the same frame.
"Once the home of a happy family, it has become the confining refuge of traumatized individuals. Uncomfortable and threatening, the scars of the past persist within its walls. In this series of photographs, I revisit those memories. Some feel vague, others almost surreal. Most remain embedded in the unchanged decor of the apartment".
The project takes shape through a precise manipulation of scale, texture, and material. Using handcrafted clay models, fragments of furniture, everyday objects, plaster figures, and her own body, Faustino builds scenes that oscillate between the seemingly real and the distorted, the familiar and the alien. The apartment ceases to function as a stable site of comfort, becoming instead a psychological structure where emotions materialize through architecture, objects, and spatial relations.
The artist uses 1:12 scale models of her apartment to approach its dysfunctionality from a controlled distance and to reflect on the formation of identity within an imbalanced domestic environment. These miniature reconstructions initially suggest the familiarity of everyday space, yet closer observation reveals unsettling details: the ordinary interior gradually loses its sense of safety, producing an atmosphere shaped by the logic of the uncanny.
Faustino’s practice can be situated within a broader lineage of surrealist strategies and artists who use constructed environments and tactile materials to explore psychological states. In this context, the work of Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer offers a compelling point of reference through its surrealist sensibility, handcrafted scenography, and unsettling relationship between bodies and objects. His films construct claustrophobic interiors in which furniture, walls, and everyday materials appear psychologically charged, blurring the boundary between physical space and emotional experience. Faustino approaches domestic space through a similarly tactile and spatial logic, using photography and staged situations to evoke memory within objects, interiors, and the bodies of its inhabitants.
Faustino’s practice can be situated within a broader lineage of surrealist strategies and artists who use constructed environments and tactile materials to explore psychological states. In this context, the work of Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer offers a compelling point of reference through its surrealist sensibility, handcrafted scenography, and unsettling relationship between bodies and objects. His films construct claustrophobic interiors in which furniture, walls, and everyday materials appear psychologically charged, blurring the boundary between physical space and emotional experience. Faustino approaches domestic space through a similarly tactile and spatial logic, using photography and staged situations to evoke memory within objects, interiors, and the bodies of its inhabitants.
"We no longer know which reality the photographs depict: the idealized vision of a little girl, the world of a dollhouse, or the distant, unsettling reality of a wounded adult. The meticulous reconstruction of my apartment becomes a cathartic gesture, inviting me to reexamine my memories, confront my childhood hopes, and finally lay them to rest".
Sara De Brito Faustino lives and works in Lausanne, Switzerland. She graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Photography from École cantonale d’art de Lausanne. Working primarily with photography, Faustino’s practice explores materiality, gesture, and emotional tension through carefully staged images. In 2025, Sara was selected for the Foam Talent 2026, for the Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents, presented at LUMA Arles during Les Rencontres d’Arles. Since then, she has continued developing the project A Home With No Roof, turning it into her first monographic book, published in November 2025 by Ciao Press and Editions Images Vevey.
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