During this year’s Fuori Salone in Milan, Alberto Levi Gallery and renowned rug designer Lila Valadan invite visitors to step beyond the hectic heartbeat of the city into a place quieter than silence—a realm where senses are recalibrated, beauty is distilled to its purest form, and true minimalism emerges through ancient weaving techniques and tactile narratives.

At the heart of the exhibition lies HEECH (Persian for “Nothingness”), a profound philosophy rooted in Persian Sufism. It embraces the idea that creation springs from nothingness, which permeates the universe and resides within all of us. To surrender to this emptiness is to dissolve the ego and discover wisdom, beauty, and unity.

Lila Valadan’s Aleph Collection embodies this ethos, blending the raw poetry of nature with a reverence for tradition and craftsmanship. As the leading female rug artist from Iran, a nine-time Carpet Design Award winner, and an AD 100 nominee, Valadan’s work bridges past and future, carrying the belief that tradition is not about preserving ashes but keeping the fire alive.

Crafting a Lila Valadan rug is akin to a silent prayer—a meditative dance of the hands. It is an art both ancient and perpetually youthful, telling stories of Persia’s gentle hills and vast deserts. Textures form like constellations in a starlit sky, born from distant dreams and familiar landscapes. The colors—extracted from pomegranate peels, saffron, and walnut shells—are more than pigments; they are the living essence of the land, infused with sun, sand, and the earth’s vitality. Her rugs do not merely come into existence—they grow, thread by thread, like a tree shaped by time, spirit, and intention.

HEECH offers a raw, unfiltered perspective on design, stripping away the noise of superficial trends to reveal a language shaped by materiality, organic movement, and the timeless energy of human hands. Rooted in Sufi philosophy, the exhibition explores the poetic interplay of emptiness, light, and shadow—symbols of the void essential for encountering the divine. This minimalist yet profound approach embodies a spiritual ideology of shedding ego and worldly desires to uncover truth, unity, and inner peace. It invites those attuned to the subtle art of listening to connect with creations infused with history, spirit, and authentic meaning.

Lila Valadan: “When everybody tries to be something, be nothing.”