The Hymns to the Pig is a graphic design project exploring how ideas of the sacred and the taboo are constructed through visual culture. Responding to the negative stereotypes surrounding pigs in popular and social media, Xinming He studied religious iconography and the visual conventions used to communicate holiness, including halos, symmetry, symbolic gestures, decorative motifs and ritual objects.

Through a series of three publications and a screen-printed long-scroll illustration, the project replaces conventional sacred figures with pigs, constructing an alternative visual system centred on their worship. By bringing together historical imagery, religious texts and visual experimentation, the work examines how visual culture can reinforce prejudice, establish hierarchies between living beings and shape ideas of purity, value and authority. It ultimately asks whether both sacredness and stigma can be visually manufactured.