Xinming He
Xinming He is a graphic designer educated at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) and The Glasgow School of Art (GSA), where he completed an MDes in Graphic Design. His practice focuses on editorial design, publishing and visual storytelling. Through collecting, sequencing and recontextualising images and texts, he explores how visual systems shape cultural perceptions, social prejudice and ideas of value. His research-led work engages with ethical and social issues through publications, illustration and printmaking, creating narratives that invite reflection and discussion.
The Hymns to The Pig
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.
