Project #02

Contemporary Myths

Clubhouse Hosts .artSümer

CANAN, Eymen Aktel, Banu Birecikligil, Onur Gülfidan, Ekin Saçlıoğlu

June 11 - July 26, 2026

Contemporary Myths considers mythology not as a return to the past, but as an active contemporary language. Across painting, sculpture, textile, drawing, and installation, the artists construct symbolic worlds populated by hybrid beings, speculative landscapes, bodily transformations, and psychological archetypes.

In these practices, myth becomes less a narrative with a beginning and end than a fluid condition. Figures appear suspended between human and non-human states; interiors dissolve into dreamlike terrains; decorative motifs carry traces of ritual, spirituality, folklore, and popular culture simultaneously. The familiar is continuously destabilized. Beauty coexists with unease, intimacy with estrangement, seduction with vulnerability.

Working across video, textile, installation, and performance, CANAN draws from mythology, mysticism, and collective memory through layered symbolic narratives. Ekin Saçlıoğlu’s practice explores the body through organic forms and material transformation, while Banu Birecikligil’s paintings and sculptures unfold as psychological and emotional spaces shaped by memory and intuition. Onur Gülfidan combines symbolic imagery and theatrical atmospheres that move between reality and fiction. Through painting, drawing, and sculpture, Eymen Aktel constructs symbolic narratives where humans, animals, and nature converge, reflecting on collective life and labor.