The Turkish artist Volkan Aslan’s film installation about displacement for the 15th Istanbul Biennial reminds us that borders are arbitrary. It was therefore fitting that the artist would also present the work on the Greek island of Lesbos, where thousands of refugees are stranded in what is in essence their temporary, makeshift home.

The triptych “Home Sweet Home” follows two women going about their lives in what appears to be dreamy domesticity, but their home is then revealed to be a vessel plying the Bosporus Strait in search of an elusive safe haven. The new work is being shown simultaneously in Istanbul, where the theme of this year's biennial is “A Good Neighbour,” and in Lesbos, where it occupies the upper floor of the Mytilene Municipal Art Gallery, located in what had been the Ottoman governor's mansion.

“These women are wandering, but we do not know where they are heading, what they are fleeing. Is it because there are no good neighbors left?” Aslan said in an interview with Al-Monitor. “Showing this work in Lesbos felt important because, like the boat in the film, it offers shelter.”

A few miles north of the Mytilene gallery sits the Kara Tepe refugee camp, a low-slung collection of containers occupied by families from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Farther inland lies the Moria registration center, where barbed wire surrounds tents housing mostly men. A trickle of refugees continues to reach Lesbos, some six miles off the Turkish coast.