The huipil is a time-honored Mesoamerican style of dress still commonly worn by indigenous women throughout Mexico and Central America. These garments are traditionally designed and decorated for a wide range of settings, from religious to every day. Jimenez Underwood’s reference to the huipil honors the nopal, an indigenous cactus fruit which can be used for food, medicine, and even dye mordant. This silk wall hanging also serves as a map, as its woven grid lines suggest. In describing her aim, the artist explains that “the idea was to create a dress, a landscape, a map of sorts, that presents a visual reference to my cosmic identity embedded in this material world of reality.”

"The works examined in this essay celebrate Indigenous foodstuffs, plants native to the Americas, and when the artist elevates chili, chocolate, and nopal to the level of the sacred, these plants in all their mundane and symbolic power become aspects of the Goddess of the Americas." Anne Marie Leimer, "Garments for the Goddess of the Americas," Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Art, Weaving, Vision, Duke University Press, 2022