Dania Chelminsky

The Opuntia Ficus Indica plant, is of Mexican origin. It has similar symbolism in the Mexican, Israeli and Palestinian cultures. It symbolizes immigration, settlement, rootedness and locality. The plant constitutes a border between villages. It also crosses borders between different countries. Like immigrants, it adopts local characteristics while maintaining attributes of the original country, carrying a conflict of identity. Botanical aspects of the plant that relate to immigration, function as the mechanism by which the Opuntia series attaches to clothes or to chains.