La Vallée du Désespoir is a pictorial and performative installation by Sabrina Smaili.
Set within a fabric cocoon, it brings together three large paintings saturated with ges-
tures, symbols, and sculptural materials. The space creates a dense, immersive environ-
ment that becomes a stage for exploring painting, identity, and the contradictions of
artistic practice.
At first glance, the installation presents an excessive, almost carnivalesque visual
language. But behind the deliberate accumulation, meant to generate its own form of
abstraction, lies a critical and intimate reflection: that of an artist shaped by the
Algerian diaspora and Geneva’s working-class communities, navigating the expectations
of the art world and her own desire for social ascent.
The title references the Dunning-Kruger effect, a psychological model in which over-
confidence gives way to doubt, the so-called “valley of despair”, before gradually rising
through experience toward a more grounded sense of mastery. The artist focuses on
this fragile moment when certainty falters but the impulse to act, to speak, to paint
persists. She embraces vulnerability as a sincere form of strength.
Through a gesture of personal abstraction, the artist builds a hybrid mythology com-
posed of contradictions, excess, seduction, and violence. The “fugitive”, a recurring
figure that once escaped from her paintings, now reappears on the ground as a silicone
doormat, becoming an entry point into questions of figuration and artistic identity.
At the center of the installation, a performance with her close collaborators (Zeltia, Emi,
Melissa, Loren) introduces another tempo: one of friendship, play, and shared reflec-
tion. Sabrina Smaili claims disorder as method, humor as resistance, and vulnerability
as strength.