This essay suggests that Mio Pang Fei is a visual artist imbued with a strong intellectual agency. His artistic life and practice have been devoted to originating a model for a cultural encounter between East and West, which he names Neo-Orientalism. To perform his intended project, he produced a substantial body of work and wrote various essays. Through these outputs, he exemplifies and communicates his cultural mission of opening new paths for a Chinese art which he considers to be in need for reformulation.
The strategy to communicate artistic programmes through text is central to the avant-garde. Avant-garde manifestos advanced the intentions and strategies of artistic groups that aimed to change the way art was made and received. Mio Pang Fei departs from this tradition but differs from it: the artist-author communicates his programmes but declares it as a task for several generations and without a specific set of features.