News

Haleh Anvari is thirsty for something sweet. As she sits down in a small, crowded cafe within walking distance of the Barbican in London, where she will be performing this weekend, the Iranian photographer and writer looks at me with tired eyes and says she needs a sugar rush, before promptly ordering a can of Coke. Anvari's performance, Power of a Cliché, is in part inspired by a hunger for colour and energy – something easier on the eye than the black chador that, she argues, has become reductive visual shorthand for Iran in the west.