Jewellery designer, pâtissière, creative decorator, ceramist, DJ, artistic director contemporary art, clothes designer, recycling old cars, graphic designer and video game artist. These ten creatives live in Ibiza. Here they are.
1. ROSIE ODETTE, Jewellery designer
“I see gems how I see people. We are all diamonds in the rough waiting to be unearthed and polished. And just like a diamond, eventually we too will come out shining. For me this is the process of life and how and why I make my jewellery, to celebrate the process and transformation of the individual’s heart and soul. My Divinity Collection has been created to ignite and celebrate the hidden beauty and greatness resting deep within people. The snake symbolizes the liberation from a state of darkness into the light. When we hold the power of love and light curled too tightly within us, we tend not to shine as brightly as we truly should.
2. MARIANA REY TUR, Pâtissière
Mariana began offering her desserts at Japanese restaurant Sushiya Aoyama in Dalt Vila after training at Le Cordon Bleu, and quickly made a name for herself with perfect creations that evoked delirium and fantasy. In 2021 she won Espai Sucre’s The Best Dessert competition with “Otoño”: white chocolate, hazelnut, Hungarian white truffle and black chanterelle. This year she took third place in the best new pâtissier category at Madrid Fusión and was included in the prestigious Basque Culinary Center’s list of the top 100 young gastronomy talents. Her creations ooze the essence of Ibiza using local ingredients such as sea water and pine nuts to which she applies her delicious process. This summer you can find her overseeing the pâtisserie at Destino Pacha Ibiza.
3. SIMONE DELLA BONA, Creative decorator
Simone is a creator in continuous mutation. For 17 years he was responsible for the decoration at Pacha Ibiza, decking out 7,000 parties according to the desires and egos of countless successful DJs and their teams. “Basically I am dedicated to the transformation of spaces, giving them creative and effective solutions, always respecting the client’s idea,” he explains. “I am not an office decorator. I shape the whole project: I design, I make the pieces, I assemble and disassemble.” Six years ago he founded his own decoration company, which he named “Fuck the System” – “I’m a creative anarchic liberal,” he says. He also loves Ibiza, a place that “has pushed my inner creativity and managed to develop it to infinite limits through its people, its farmers, its surroundings, its nature and its embrace”.
4. LAURA DE GRINYO, Ceramist
Laura stands out as a ceramist, though she would have done so – and probably will – in any other artistic discipline. A student of teacher Adrián Ribas at the workshop founded by “Daifa”, one of the most acclaimed representatives of Ibiza’s pottery culture, she’s a passionate artist who creates whatever her restless and voracious imagination unleashes. Her pieces, which have been exhibited at Harrods of London and Milan Design Week, “combine lathe, sculpting techniques and different texturing tools to achieve an aesthetic that combines the classic and the contemporary in a symbiosis with a Phoenician accent so typical of Ibiza culture.” She has recently created a special collection for Isita Home, the new project of interior designer Isabel López Quesada, and is also preparing her first solo exhibition.
5. BRÖDER, DJ and co-creator of Bresh party
Bresh could be the most creative party Ibiza has seen for years. It represents a change of generation and musical trends, and Pacha has been daring enough to include it this summer. Its soul is Ale Saporiti, AKA Bröder, a DJ, visual artist and music producer who six years ago spontaneously encouraged his friend and business partner Jaime James to “set up a party like the ones we do at home”, with hit after hit in diverse music styles, from reggaeton, pop and dancehall, to rock, electro and disco. Since starting out in a small venue in Buenos Aires in 2016 he has travelled the world playing clubs in Miami, New York, Lima, Tokyo and, now, Ibiza – “the best place in the world for any DJ, where we’ve reached the Olympus of partying worldwide”.
6. ÁNGELES FERRAGUT, President and artistic director of the Ses12Naus Foundation
Ángeles Ferragut promotes contemporary creation in Ibiza through artistic residencies, and contributes “to the development of the island as a place of encounters, inspiration, research, production and enjoyment of contemporary art”. This year she has also opened La Carpintería, a new space in the Can Bufí industrial area where until September 3 you can visit the group exhibition “Preludio”, a selection of works created by new artists during residencies in 2016 and 2018. Ángeles also runs the Ses12Naus Foundation, which encompasses exciting artistic projects throughout the year. “It’s built on the basis of the role that Ibiza’s history, culture, and ability to welcome has played in my education. At the same time I am also moved by its contradictions and complexities, which motivate me to formulate and sustain questions.”
7. SONIA FERRER MARI, Designer and founder of Delbes Ibiza
Sonia Ferrer Mari’s star creation is undoubtedly her clothing brand Delbes Ibiza because of “everything it implies”. Each of her items is created like a work of art in a process that respects origins and reinterprets traditional Ibizan dress by recovering the island’s techniques and history. Production is 100% local and sustainable in every aspect, from its working methods to its fabrics and even its workers’ salaries. “It is not a brand that carries the name Ibiza just to sell more,” Sonia says. “I am an Ibizan descendant, raised in the countryside and I remember the teachings of my great-grandmother, who passed away at 102 years old, which showed me the melancholy of all the things Ibiza was losing. It is evident that Delbes lives and breathes Ibiza.”
8. CHRISTIAN SARNELLI, Founder of We Love Ibiza Art-Car
We Love Ibiza Art-Car is Christian Sarnelli’s star art and recycling project to date – “the best is yet to come,” says the self-described “creative entrepreneur”. “We are a very important part of the change that’s needed to have a better world.” The idea is “to recycle old cars from the end of the ’90s – cars that lasted a long time, unlike the ones we have now that are condemned by a system of programmed obsolescence, with all its consequent waste of energy and raw materials. When ready they are painted by artists and we rent them out so drivers can take their colour to every corner of the island.” Sarnelli says the art-cars have been an intense learning experience, giving him “the necessary preparation for my next project, which I think is going to bring a lot to the island of Ibiza.”
9. DAVID CABEZUELO POLO, Graphic designer and creative director
If before Formentera native David “considered design as a tool to develop ideas in an aesthetic way,” he now believes “in design as a social tool, given our obligation to produce results born from ideas and not from aesthetics”. Perhaps things have changed since he won the Laus graphic design award in June with his tool “Post-Vision”, which transcribes the world of colour language into Braille. Through touch, it allows sighted and blind people to communicate and is the first chart in Braille to identify and classify colours, and explain what they denote. David is now searching for investors for his idea, the product of “a summer night’s dream in Formentera that has come true.”
10. DANIEL MARÍ PAPEREL, 3D video-game artist
At the age of 32, this young man from Santa Eulària is living the dream of many: working as a 3D artist specializing in video games in Osaka, Japan – the cradle of gamer culture. At his employer Upsurge Studios East, the branch of an Australian company, Daniel is responsible for designing stylized characters for studios around the world. He says he doesn’t have a favourite creation, but “the one I like the most is a little blue devil that I digitally sculpted live a few years ago on my Twitch channel”. The “unique atmosphere of Ibiza and having grown up there in my formative years changes the way I interpret the world, so without a doubt the island always influences my creative process”.
