Somewhere between a theatre production, a temporary village, and a very convincing argument against adulting, Hotel X returned to Ibiza this spring for its second edition. Created by Christiana Rigaud and Maral Purmandi, the biannual 24-hour pop-up hotel is not really a hotel. Hotels are places where somebody tells you where breakfast is. Hotel X is what happens when two women with an unusual relationship to creativity decide that a villa should function more like a collective subconscious and somehow convince a small army of artists and curious humans to move in for a day.
The first thing worth mentioning is that none of this is random. From the outside, Hotel X can look gloriously chaotic. Tiny doors appear in walls. Bathrooms become opera houses. Strangers confess things they probably haven’t told their therapists. Yet underneath the madness sits an almost obsessive level of curation. Every room, transition, and emotional plot twist has been designed as part of a shared journey. The first Hotel X already hinted at what Rigaud and Purmandi were building. It began, naturally, with lunch. Not the kind where people exchange LinkedIn updates while pretending to enjoy quinoa. The first gathering opened with a Persian feast by chef Banita. Guests were invited to toast not their successes, but their shadows, biggest mistakes, secret kinks, and magnificent screw-ups. Within 20 minutes, strangers were cheering to heartbreaks, bad decisions, and beautifully human imperfections.
From there, guests entered The Fluffroom, essentially Cloud 9, filled with an undisclosed yet clearly irresponsible amount of white fluff. People floated, meditated, and disappeared into their subconscious while Marta’s sacred sounds drifted through the room. Later, Lo Fang performed against an Ibiza sunset so offensively beautiful it felt like the island was showing off. Christiana Rigaud’s poetry stitched together rooms, emotions, and strangers like an invisible thread. Then came The Black Dinner. Created by chef Abel and visual artist Lala, guests entered a rainbow-coloured room where every item on the table was black. The dinner explored the idea that the most beautiful things are born by first walking through darkness.
This year, the world grew larger. The invitation instructed guests to arrive as their current emotion. Not their favourite outfit. Not their festival persona. Their actual emotion. Perched above the Mediterranean, the house felt less like a property and more like a physical manifestation of somebody’s imagination. Hidden staircases disappeared into unexpected corners. Tiny doors revealed entire worlds. Bedrooms transformed into stages. Corridors became portals. Guests were welcomed by Sasha Crespi, who operates somewhere between poet, philosopher, and wizard. On a cliff overlooking the sea, Rigaud and electronic guitarist Etna opened the gathering as the entire group stood facing the horizon. Lex Empress transformed painted emotions into improvised songs and woven tapestries. Ellabanna and violin virtuoso Fabrice You guided guests through an exploration of intimacy. Hidden beneath a staircase, Purmandi’s Transformation Station asked not who are you, but who are you becoming.
Elsewhere, Joy and DJ Ares led adults back towards childhood through movement, feathers, and a pillow fight. Sebastian Urbanke transformed a bathroom into an opera house. Jemma’s Ancestral Airlines invited guests to surrender emotional baggage before boarding fictional flights towards imagined futures. The genius of Hotel X is not any individual room, performance, or installation. It is the ecosystem created between them. For 24 hours, artists stop performing for people and start creating with them. The line between audience and participant quietly dissolves. Hotel X returns this October for its third edition. There are no tickets. No VIP area. No guest list. Just an invitation extended to people carrying enough curiosity, creative fury, and appetite for wonder. After seeing the world, you need to give the world something to see.
Hotel X was created by Christiana Rigaud and Maral Purmandi. Christiana grew up in an orphanage she describes as “a house constantly on fire.” Somewhere along the way, she discovered that a pencil costing fifty cents could become a portal out. Since then, she has spent her life creating worlds through poetry, performance, and immersive experiences. Maral’s story began in Iran before her family fled political persecution and rebuilt their lives in Germany. Growing up between countries, cultures, and identities left her with a mild obsession for the question of who we become when nobody is telling us who to be. Together they share a fascination with transformation. Not the Instagram kind. The real kind. Hotel X was born from a simple observation: everybody wants community, creativity, and connection, but very few spaces are designed for them to actually happen. So they built one.
