Animal Magnetism

In H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau, a nut-bag scientist upsets the balance of nature by grafting animal parts onto human beings, creating a schizzy breed of mutants that made the reader’s hair stand on end.

Students and faculty of the Miami International University of Art & Design have ripped a page from the sci-fi classic and hatched their own crossbreed experiments with equally bizarre flair. “Manimalism,” opening today at 4:00 at the university’s main gallery, features more than twenty animal/human hybrid characters that curator and sculpture instructor Brian Hiveley says, “reveal inner truths about society, personal relationships, and self-awareness.”

Some of the unusual figures on display include a clammy frogman, a squidboy decked out as a cowpoke, a regal swan diva, and a potbellied, pig-faced pug. Hiveley believes visitors “may find a little bit of themselves in some of the figures.” Or maybe they’ll come away with notions that Borat has been getting chummy with livestock again. On exhibit through November 22.
Nov. 2-22