KAMEY BUTLER

She Remembered Herself

Open Studio | July 25-26, 2026, 4:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Artist Talk | July 25, 2026, 6:00 PM

Zaratan - Arte Contemporânea presents She Remembered Herself, an Open Studio by Kamey Butler consisting of a multidisciplinary and evolving series, exploring what it means to return to oneself after years of living in response to expectation, performance, and survival.

It was during her current artist residency at Zaratan that this series began, a period of slowing down that revealed to the artist that the most meaningful transformations rarely announce themselves dramatically. They unfold quietly in ordinary days, in stillness, in movement, and in the spaces between. By bringing together a visual and written practice with a profound study of the neuroscience of creativity and human behavior, Butler investigates the terrain where identity re-emerges through subtle acts of remembering.

Working across charcoal, photography, moving image, writing, and installation, the series inhabits the liminal space between certainty and becoming. In her works, faces dissolve into atmosphere, bodies blur in motion, and features remain intentionally incomplete. Rather than documenting a finished "self," the viewer is invited to experience presence before recognition. The artist's practice is not a mere illustration of ideas, but a somatic way of thinking; the unstructured process of mark-making loosens what is held too tightly in the body, mirroring the brain's capacity to rewire itself through creative engagement.

In this context, the exhibition raises a central question: who are we when we stop performing the versions of ourselves that once kept us safe? Pieces like Unfixed, a video installation where the body remains in a continuous state of becoming, or Do You Recognize You?, which returns the viewer's own reflection, refuse to fix identity within a single recognizable frame. The medium used is always secondary; "Memory" is the true starting material, and the language it chooses to express itself dictates the final form of the work.

The series also acts as a visual companion to a forthcoming memoir, extending the same reflection into written form: how our identity is shaped by what we survive. She Remembered Herself is not about transforming into a new person, but rather about recognizing the woman who was there all along.

BIO | KAMEY BUTLER is a multidisciplinary creative with over twenty-five years of experience shaping how brands and cultural institutions communicate through aesthetics. Working across fashion, entertainment, and the arts, she developed a deep fluency in how visual language carries meaning across different contexts. Alongside her professional life, she maintains a studio practice in abstract painting, charcoal, and watercolor. This artistic understanding was deepened by her certification in mindfulness facilitation and a substantive study of neuroscience and human behavior. Currently, she is developing a body of written work (personal essays and structured narrative) that examines identity, the body, and creative expression through the lens of transition. Having learned to find the essential thread in complex material through brand storytelling, she now applies that same discipline to inner investigation. She lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

LINKS | https://www.instagram.com/kameyb/ | https://rfcm.studio/

SUPPORT | Zaratan is a structure financed by the República Portuguesa - Cultura / Direção-Geral das Artes