Carly Butler (she/her) is a settler artist in Canada of British and Iranian descent. She currently lives and works on Vancouver Island in Ucluelet on the traditional territory of the Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ. Her interdisciplinary practice reinterprets nautical knowledge around navigation and survival to reflect on longing, regret, and nostalgia.

Carly has an MA in Art History from The University of Manchester where she focussed her thesis studies on Iranian women artists in exile (see 'Press/Writing'). Carly later studied fine art at Central Saint Martins in London and completed a BFA at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She was a finalist for the RBC Canadian Painting Competition in 2014. Her work has been supported by Arts Nova Scotia and the BC Arts Council, as well as the Canada Council for the Arts. Carly has recently exhibited at Campbell River Art Gallery, Hatch Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia, Queens Museum, New York, and the Today Art Museum in Beijing.

Carly is currently working on a long distance digital walking project with UK artist Gudrun Filipska who is also the founder The Arts Territory Exchange, an international arts program through which they have also been developing a virtual residency. Their walking project, The S Project, was recently featured on the CBC and their writings on the project have been published in a variety of journals including The LivingMaps Review and as part of the 'Walkings New Movement' Conference at Plymouth University, November 2019. See 'Press/Writing' for more.

Carly has also been collaborating with Nuu-chah-nulth artist Hjalmer Wenstob from the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations. They are developing projects where they can have a reciprocal conversation between settler and Indigenous histories and explore issues around colonialism and reconciliation. See: https://www.butlerandwenstob.com/

An amateur navigator, Carly has been learning celestial navigation as part of her practice and is a member of the British Columbia Offshore Sailing Association.