Completing the triad of biennials this fall, the fifth Istanbul Biennale takes advantage of the city’s identity as a gateway between the East and West in site-specific works staged at the metropolitan airport, train stations, and bridges. In what director Rosa Martinez sees as an exploration of the “relations between art and life,” “On Life, Beauty, Translations and Other Difficulties” summons a “return to beauty” (at press time, some eighty-five artists from forty-five countries were being considered). In addition to “environmental works,” artists chosen will exhibit at four very different venues: the eighteenth-century Imperial Mint, the fourth-century basilica of Hagia Eirene, the sixth-century Yerebatan Cistern, and the Women’s Library and Information Center, established in 1990.
