Bolon’s Exodus Turns Woven Flooring Into a Fantastical Migration

Every year, Milan Design Week becomes a gateway to a fantastical land where design, make-believe, and material experimentation collide. The city transforms into a fever dream of sensorial installations, each blurring the line between reality and imagination, art and function. In this dream-like landscape, Swedish woven design brand Bolon, in collaboration with multidisciplinary designers Luca Nichetto and JoAnn Tan, unveiled Exodus – a theatrical installation that reimagines Bolon’s flooring as a surreal journey through texture and transformation.

Set inside a historic Milanese house that once operated as a textile factory, Exodus found a fitting home. Today, the building belongs to Tan, who now dreams up her fantastical works surrounded by original stuccos, frescoes, and baroque flourishes. Much like her creative direction for window displays and fashion sets, Exodus unfolds with meticulous detail. “In a landscape of solo acts it was so much fun to create a duet,” says Tan. “While we work in different fields, Luca and I found common ground in our mutual interest in oddities and monsters. This was a creative process much encouraged by the carte blanche from Bolon and punctuated by great conversation and laughter.”

Using Bolon’s climate-neutral rugs and flooring – made from 68% waste materials – Tan and Nichetto created anthropomorphic creatures and sculptural landscapes that feel pulled from a parallel world. “Exodus celebrates the art of encounter, of change, of evolution; two visions – JoAnn’s and mine – intertwining for the first time, thanks to Bolon who made it possible,” says Nichetto. “The installation fully reflects my idea of storytelling through objects and spaces, the possibility to express the power and potential of material, which is something deeply connected to my work, and give it life.”

The space is split into two realms. One side conjures a primordial forest, where Bolon’s woven surfaces rise organically from the ground in rich textures. Slender-legged spiders and crab-like creatures crawl across geometric flooring, on a migration of their own. A segmented, serpent-like figure emerges and disappears again – its slow movement echoing a creature wading through water.

The other side shifts into lightness. Here, ethereal hues and floating forms evoke a dreamy calm. Flamingo-like beings drift above and below, their elongated, puppet-like noses guiding visitors toward an outdoor courtyard.

At its center, a pond becomes the resting place for a winged snake – a mythical creature from Mexican folklore that, by chance, found its way into Tan’s creation.

Though the installation stuns at first glance, its magic lives in the details. Bolon’s woven material is hand-cut with precision, then folded and sculpted into wings, tails, and torsos. Golden rods are bent into spindly legs and antennae. Each element is a testament to material mastery – and to Bolon’s ongoing mission of “transforming woven flooring into an art form that blends aesthetics with sustainability,” as noted by owners Marie and Annica Eklund.

If there was ever any doubt that flooring could go beyond the floor, Exodus puts it to rest – proving that material, when guided by imagination, can tell stories, shape space, and transport us somewhere entirely new.

JoAnn Tan and Luca Nichetto

For more information on JoAnn Tan and Luca Nichetto’s Exodus exhibition, visit bolon.com.

Installation photography by Max Rommel.