Opuntia
Ongoing project
When cochineal insects are crushed against the surface of the prickly pear in Tunisia, a deep carmine stain spreads across the cactus skin. This red pigment once fueled colonial trade routes between Mexico and Europe, dyeing aristocratic garments and shaping early global economies. Today, that same plant — Opuntia ficus-indica — stands at the intersection of climate resilience, agricultural dependency, and contested identity.
Native to the Americas and naturalized across the Mediterranean after Spanish colonization, the cactus carries a layered history of displacement and renaming. In different countries, its popular names often reflect political tensions and perceptions of “the other.” Simultaneously invasive and essential, hostile and nourishing, it is used as fencing, food, animal feed, cosmetic base, and medicine. It sustains rural economies while remaining vulnerable to the cochineal parasite — an ecological and economic threat.
In the context of accelerating desertification and rising temperatures, the prickly pear has become a symbol of environmental adaptation. Its Taíno-derived name “tuna,” meaning “water-bearing,” marks it as one of the most resilient species in arid regions. But what happens if this emblem of resistance collapses?
This project traces the cactus’ transatlantic trajectory in reverse — from the Mediterranean back to the Americas — investigating its role as a living archive of colonial circulation and contemporary climate futures. Through long-term photographic fieldwork in Tunisia, Mexico, and the United States, I document agricultural landscapes, botanical research centers, border ecologies, farmers, conservation scientists, and communities whose identities and livelihoods are intertwined with this plant.
At a moment of accelerating ecological and political division, this project uses photography as a slow archive of coexistence, documenting how survival is negotiated through natural and human systems of exchange. The work seeks to visualise resilience as a material condition, where landscapes, plants, and communities adapt to planetary crisis.
At a moment when political systems harden divisions, this project investigates a species that embodies both exclusion and interdependence, resilience and fragility, border and circulation.