Tuba Şamlı’s “The Drowned Gods” at x-ist Istanbul: Icarus, the Titanic and the Silence After Ambition

Every story of flight contains a story of falling. Icarus rises on wax wings and drops into the sea; Prometheus steals fire and is chained to a rock; a great ship called unsinkable goes down on its maiden voyage. In “The Drowned Gods,” Tuba Şamlı’s first solo exhibition, at x-ist in Istanbul (15 October – 14 November 2026), these stories are drawn together into a single, slow-moving meditation on what happens after the climb.

The Drowned Gods at x-ist: a debut built on myth

First solo shows are often a survey of everything an artist has tried. This one is unusually focused. Around twenty works, almost all dated 2026, take one question and turn it over: why do human beings keep trying to go beyond their limits — to fly, to master nature, to defeat death — and what is left when the attempt fails? The gallery’s text follows that urge from ancient myth all the way to modern technology and space exploration.

The titles read like an index of overreach. There are Titans, Icarus (written in capitals as IKARUS), Bellerophon — the hero who tried to ride Pegasus to Olympus and was thrown — Prometheus and Orpheus, who went down to the underworld and lost what he came for by looking back. Turkish and Japanese legend enter too, through Tepegöz, the one-eyed giant of the Dede Korkut tales, and Yamata no Orochi, the eight-headed serpent. Then come the twentieth century’s versions of the same story: Exodus, Challenger and HONOR & GLORY.

Who is Tuba Şamlı?

Şamlı is a new name on the Istanbul gallery circuit, and that is part of the interest. Neither x-ist nor the press announcement published this week gives a detailed biography; what is clear is that this is her first solo exhibition, and that a long-established gallery has chosen to give a debut its full space. Visitors are, in effect, meeting an artist at the start of her public career — something that happens less often than it should in a market that tends to favour familiar names.

Acrylic pen on paper: patience as a medium

The medium matters here. Every work is made in acrylic pen on paper — a tool that leaves no room for the broad, forgiving gesture of a brush. Images are built line by line, and several works are spread across diptychs and a triptych, with the largest single sheets measuring 100 × 70 cm. That slowness sits in deliberate tension with the subject matter. The myths are about speed, daring and sudden collapse; the drawings are about duration and care. A fall that took seconds in the story takes hours on the page.

For painters and draughtspeople, this is the technical point to watch. Pen work at this scale demands a strategy for density: how to build darkness without paint, how to suggest depth and water with marks that are all, essentially, the same width. How Şamlı solves those problems across twenty sheets is the real lesson of the show.

Water as the meeting point

The unifying element is water. In the exhibition text it becomes the realm where human structures, myths and ideas of power meet time — the place where heroism and defeat, progress and collapse blur into one another. Icarus falls into the sea; the Titanic sinks into it; a space shuttle breaks apart above it. The gallery sums up the project in one line: the show “looks at the silence that follows this endless desire to rise.”

Crucially, the drowning is not read only as an ending. The text suggests that sinking and disappearing may also carry the possibility of another beginning. That turns the exhibition from a cautionary tale into something more open: a reflection on cycles rather than verdicts. It is a fitting idea for a city like Istanbul, built on water and on the layered ruins of earlier ambitions.

x-ist and the Gümüşsuyu scene

x-ist works from a first-floor space on Mete Caddesi in Gümüşsuyu, a short walk from Taksim and on the edge of the Beyoğlu gallery district. Its programme has long included both established Turkish artists and younger voices, and a debut solo with this degree of conceptual focus fits that pattern. For visitors doing an autumn round of Istanbul galleries, it pairs naturally with shows in nearby Beyoğlu, Karaköy and Dolapdere.

Why it matters

• For collectors: a first solo exhibition is the earliest point at which a body of work can be seen as a whole. Works on paper at this stage of a career are also a more accessible entry point.
• For painters and illustrators: a sustained case study in building large, dense images with a single, unforgiving tool.
• For anyone interested in myth: an unusual cross-cultural cast — Greek, Anatolian, Japanese and modern — read through one shared theme.

Visiting information

x-ist, Gümüşsuyu Mah., Süren Apt., Mete Cad. No: 8, Kat: 1, Beyoğlu, Istanbul. 15 October – 14 November 2026. Tuesday–Saturday 11:00–19:00; closed Sunday and Monday. Phone +90 212 291 77 84, [email protected]. See the official exhibition page, our The Drowned Gods listing for the full facts table, and Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries for more openings in Istanbul and beyond.