Don’t Get Too Comfortable
‘Don’t Get Too Comfortable’ is a heartfelt introspective letter to my deceased grandfather. The letter questions the continuous pattern of movement amongst Yemenis in diaspora. The film fuses archival photographs, sourced footage, parallax animation, abstract videos to create an audio visual body of work that calls attention to the collective feeling of statelessness and sense of being felt by Yemeni (or non-Yemeni) migrants.
Shaima Al-Tamimi is a Yemeni-Kenyan visual storyteller based in the GCC. Her work explores themes such as migration, identity, and social issues through introspection and a deeply-rooted documentary approach. Using photography, film, audio and writing as mediums, she merges historical and family archives with present-day portraits and visuals to create vivid narratives. Challenging mainstream and linear notions of identity, her work offers unique perspectives into the lives of her subjects and calls for a more nuanced understanding of native experiences. Shaima is a 2020 Social Justice & Photography fellow with Magnum Foundation, which resulted in the multimedia video film ‘Don’t Get Too comfortable’ and a former participant of the Arab Documentary Photography program through which she completed her project ‘As If We Never Came’ in 2019. She was also one of the forces behind the 2020 global ‘Prints for Yemen’ sale with Inti Bint, collaborating with 14 Yemeni Female artists to raise funds for farmer families to grow crops sustainably in the rural parts of Yemen. Shaima is also a long-term contributing member to Everyday Middle East.
