The effects of colonization have forced indigenous groups to lose their ancestor’s generational knowledge. Indigenous Mesoamerican groups believed in cycles and one must give to receive. I designed a cutting board that encourages a more holistic form of cooking through the spiritual lens of exchange. I discovered when one invests time, love, and passion into preparing a meal they exchange that care for the meal which is then consumed. That food gets further exchanged into life itself, and with that life, a loved one has the power to do anything. When my family feeds me they provide me with limitless opportunities.
The documentation of recipes is nonexistent within my family and is slowly lost through time. Using inspiration from Indigenous art I designed a modernized system of hieroglyphs to burn my grandma’s recipe for mole verde into wooden tablets preserving her knowledge. The cutting board is intentionally designed for my grandma’s way of cooking as she does not measure the quantities of ingredients and pinches them in the meal as needed. By using the cutting board and recipe tablets, my family can seamlessly learn about and integrate our ancestor's lost practice into their everyday lives.
