Group Efforts Succeed During Milan Design Week

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Group Efforts Succeed During Milan Design Week

Collaborations among designers allow for new creations during the event.

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Ai Weiwei worked with Rubelli to create textiles that make a political statement.

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Felipe Sanguinetti

By

The New York Times

April 19, 2026,

5:04 a.m. ET

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This article is part of our

Design special report

previewing Milan Design Week.

A Protest Beneath the Surface

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A textile by Ai Weiwei for his About Silk collection, a collaboration with Rubelli.

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Felipe Sanguinetti

For Ai Weiwei, there is no separation between activism and art. Even the Chinese artist’s new textile collection, About Silk, a collaboration with the Italian luxury house Rubelli, is a political statement. “What we usually call ‘protest’ is in fact a way of protecting human nature: a cry or a voice, which is often completed by individuals,” he wrote in an email.

One form his protest takes is a richly figured lampas fabric called “The Animal That Looks Like a Llama but Is Actually an Alpaca,” woven with silk and metal threads depicting surveillance cameras, handcuffs and the Twitter bird logo. (The social media platform now known as X was permanently blocked by China in 2009.) There is an alpaca, too, an animal that is a protest meme in China because the Mandarin word that denotes it, “caonima,” literally “grass mud horse,” sounds like a vulgar phrase

and thus is used to slip by the censors.

The textile’s difficult-to-discern gold pattern on a red background was adapted from a wallpaper Mr. Ai designed in 2015. Close attention is required to see beneath the lavish surface to pick out the underlying references to authoritarian suppression and imprisonment, including the artist’s own.

Another Rubelli lampas, called “Finger,” which is on display, reproduces the obscene gesture Mr. Ai has frequently used in his art to express his disdain for authority. Here, the protest symbol lies right on the surface.

About Silk is on view Monday through Saturday at Rubelli, 9 Via Fatebenefratelli, Milan;

rubelli.com

.

— IFEOLUWA ADEDEJI

The Fluid Mille Fleurs Chandelier

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The Mille Fleurs chandelier by the designer Bethan Laura Wood, a collaboration with Baccarat.

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via Baccarat

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