Aida Laleian’s surrealistic photographs present a series of composite mythic creatures, each combining the portrait head and/or torso of the artist with the body of a taxidermic specimen of a wild beast. Although Laleian has focused her energies for the past eight years primarily on photographic self-portraiture, the modern mythic hybrids she presents in this exhibition, entitled “Atavistic Beasts,” constitute a departure from her signature compound self-portraits.

Laleian combines specimens photographed primarily in natural history museums or from nature magazines with close-up self-portraits