A Lion in my room

When the title ‘a lion in my room’ dawned as the theme for the 2020 edition of OVNi festival, no one could have expected the catastrophe that Covid-19 would caused. These words come from Allen Ginsberg’s poem : « The lion for real ». In this poem, the narrator gets back home and finds a lion in his living room. He tries to escape from it but fails. No one believes him when he describes his misadventure. This seems to reflect the period we are living in. Scientists, whistleblowers, artists had already warned us about our own lions. Nonetheless, we often continue to live as if those lions do not exist. Ever since, « a lion in my room » has taken on a broader meaning. The reality of the pandemic imposes itself upon us. Overnight, here we are, all of us confined, locked in, facing ourselves and the situation. OVNi 2020 is mirroring our own lions, our own personal and collective challenges, our own fights and interrogations. To quote Albert Camus, we could say that our era is forbidding us to become disengaged from it. The artist « is embarked on the difficult time of his era».

Bérangère Armand – curator