Lee Li-Chung’s early photographic works comprise mainly snapshots which went through a thorough process of editing to create dialogues on wall spaces. There was a clear transformation in his style subsequent to his 2015 work, Space Out; and his 2016 project Longing for Your Return opened up new vistas in his practice, and re-established his relationship with pigeons.

Following The Battle of Mt. Zhugao and Red Feet Ling and The Memo of Formosa Air Battle, Lee has once again found gaps in the silenced history, using pigeons as protagonists in his narratives to develop Tieguoshan. Pigeons carrying positioning systems are placed in unnoticed events in history to bear witness; at the same time, pigeons also become the vehicles for Lee’s travel through time and space. In the midst of narratives that cannot ultimately change the past, a dotted line of divergent history is drawn by the entrancing and fascinating flightpath of the pigeons.

Pigeons navigate by determining a direction and then taking flight according to landmarks along the way; the pigeons’ flightpath in Tieguoshan roughly follows the Zhuoshui River from midstream to downstream. In this work, Lee does not present figurative landscapes, but this dotted flightpath in the corridors of the NCPI. It is a mission as well as a way home.