"khaana sutra", 2023/24
illustration- conceptual design- graphic design
“Khaana Sutra” is a project focused on decolonising ready meals. In my eyes, ready meals took away all the meaning of food- cultural significance, rituals, bonding and service; instead providing people with mere sustenance and not much else.
Upon moving to the UK, I found that Indian food was one of my biggest culture shocks. The food I most expected to be familiar with was completely foreign to me. Through this project, I decided to reintroduce the meaning of food into ready meals by reintroducing the cultural significance and ritual of cooking into our meals.
This recipe card provides instructions to make an authentic “Chicken Jalfrezi” out of a ready made roast dinner.
The cards were completely hand-drawn, to evoke the sense of a family recipe.
I included illustrations of the hands interacting with every step of the cooking process to emphasise the significance of the love and effort that goes into cooking.
I adorned the hands with traditional jewellery and red dye “Alta” worn by dancers to emphasise the cultural connection to the dish as well as reffering to the process of cooking as an art form.
I put the recipe cards into grocery store shelves so that other people could try “escape” soulless ready meals as well.
further explorations
further explorations on the topic of decolonisation brought me to the conclusion that an authentic practice of one’s culture within a colonial framework is a radical act of decolonisation in itself.
I collected responses from people living away from their home countries via social media, asking people the significance of their cultural foods and other things they do to practice their culture in their new home. I used the data I collected to create personal
“recipes for decolonisation”
