July 21, 4:30 - 6:00 PM9th-15th, 2007
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery, NYC

Iranian Alliances Across Borders (IAAB) and ArteEast are proud to present an afternoon of spoken word performance with Haleh Anvari, photographer/writer from Iran. Haleh's performance will look at the ways in which Iranian women are represented both in the West and in Iran, focusing on the icon of the chador.

Haleh Anvari and her work

Through her performance, she deconstructs the black chador as the preferred icon of the Western media and the Islamic Republic of Iran: "Both camps use me as the icon for the clash of civilizations. One wants to protect my soul, the other wants to rescue it…so you see me in my total blackness on books and magazines. I sell copy, I sell an idea, and in the folds of my black chador I sell in one place two violently opposed ideologies which are set on an ugly collision course."
The performance is part of simultaneous art exhibitions this summer in Washington, DC and Tehran entitled: TRANSFORM/NATION: Contemporary Art of Iran and its Diaspora (www.iranianalliances.org/art.htm).

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