Holly Rios: I’d like to return this body.

Pairing erasure with appropriated imagery, Rios explores the Playboy empire as a data set that began leveraging and reinforcing American beauty standards in the 1950s. Highlighting patterns of representation in the publication (prior to its retirement of print material in 2016), she places emphasis on the volume of content to examine the magnitude of Playboy’s influence. She examines the complex dichotomy of “reflection versus reinforcement” by representing sexualized bodies in ways that are both disruptive to and complicit with the male gaze. Tying this imagery back to capitalism and technology through text, she asserts a deep connection between the bodies that are sold to us and the quiet ways these frameworks inform our perspectives.