In 1997, Joelle Sportès feels ready for an encounter with the public and organises her first exhibition, Around the word in 25 painting at the gallery "Entre Ciel et Terre" near Geneva.

Vivid hues of blue and green prevail on the twenty-five canvasses which take the visitors around the world. From place to place, a subtle thread is woven. Behind the luxuriance of tropical vegetation, the gaze makes out a furtive and invisible life, while the sobriety of a Moroccan courtyard, inhabited by silence only, similarly stirs up a memory of secret things.

Whether she paints the opening of a sea horizon, the contemplative mood of a domestic place, or the streaming lights of an anonymous metropolis, Joëlle Sportès always gets to the intimate.

Such scenes once again demonstrate Joëlle Sportès taste for the luxuriance of a nature which is never fully domesticated, no matter how close to us it gets : lurking shadows arouse anxiety ; the gaze is crushed by the dark masses of mountains or shrubberies, while the opacity of a low sky hangs on the water.

It is against such oppression, such uniformity that the delicately declined transparency or vividness of the painter's shimmering hues is to be measured.