I-Hsuen Chen went abroad in 2010 and became a foreigner in New York City. During a brief visit back home after one year overseas, he found himself rootless and isolated: a reverse culture shock so to speak. Attempting to locate his disappearing self, Chen began an image voyage that brought him to the roads of Taiwan. As if a lead character to a classic road movie, Chen adapted the tradition of American road photography and drove on to his own, personal journey.
Things and scenes passed and replaced each other on the road, from cities to towns to countrysides. Time and space seemed to loose their significance, becoming independent from the context of past and future. The sense of individual subjectivity solidified, while the sense of identity and belonging evanesced and dissipated. Chen began to document the "nowhere" in his journey—the undefined, obscured spaces in the midst of scenic sites and cityscapes; some were hardly urbanized, and others appeared to be abandoned. The series of documentation allowed the artist to reflect on the various forms of self-isolation that he found himself in.