The Drowned Gods

The Drowned Gods is the first solo exhibition of Tuba Şamlı, on view at x-ist in Gümüşsuyu, Istanbul, from 15 October to 14 November 2026. Born in Ankara in 1978, Şamlı shows new drawings made in 2026 with acrylic pen on paper. They range from single sheets to two diptychs, a triptych and a work in six parts. The opening takes place on Thursday 15 October from 5.30pm to 8pm.

The drawings bring together figures from several mythologies. Greek stories appear in works on Icarus, Prometheus, Orpheus and Bellerophon, who is brought down by a gadfly sent by Zeus on his way to Olympus. YAMATA no OROCHI turns to Japanese myth: the storm god Susanoo gets an eight-headed dragon drunk on sake before killing it. DUM TUM takes up Deli Dumrul, who charges a toll at a bridge over a dry riverbed, and TEPEGÖZ the one-eyed giant defeated by Basat.

Disasters of the modern age sit beside the myths. HONOR & GLORY takes its title from the carving Honour and Glory Crowning Time, which framed the clock on the Titanic's First-Class Grand Staircase. TITANS pairs the liner, lost in 1912, with the Titan submersible, which collapsed under pressure on a dive to the same wreck in 2023. CHALLENGER sets the Challenger disaster against two gods, Uranus and Tangaroa, a god of the ocean.

Water runs through the series, and several works are set on the sea bed. In PROMETHEUS the figure lies there like a sunken statue, his fire turned into a lighthouse and his eagle into a robot. ORPHEUS replaces Cerberus with a three-headed shark among forest animals. LEGEND, a triptych, spreads fourteen stages of Odysseus's voyage across its side panels around a dark centre that pulls in his ship. Şamlı has dived for many years, and the underwater world feeds much of this imagery.