In early times, in addition to short stay and hidden sex trafficking trade, motels always had a negative impression in traditional perception. However, the motel renovation that has emerged in recent years also seems to provide an “image of happiness” and sell the concept of “love hotel” (Huang Bangji, 2005), displaying a different feature from the spatial characteristics “mobility” and “anonymity” of the past (Bai Liyuan, 2008). Motels in Taiwan have sprung up everywhere in recent years, which, apart from providing business- or leisure-style accommodation, are trying to satisfy a wider range of consumer groups and stimulate visual senses. New-style motels even foster crazy developments, devising various movie themes such as urban parks, heroic adventures, exoticism, etc. creating all possibilities to produce exaggerated and dazzling flavors with a large number of spaces and a wide range of interior designs. It’s really astounding and stunning. When people are embedded in this kind of space-filled imagination, are they accepting it as supply and demand? Or is it projecting the poverty of life in nature? Or is it directing a game of taboos that violates social norms? The space, being mysterious and full of fantasy, directs your senses of emotion and stirs unlimited desire deep inside human mind.

This essay mainly discusses the author’s image creation during the 2012-2018 period as the main exposition. The content of the author’s creation is mainly based on the theme-based rooms in Taiwan’s motels, photographing the images displayed in the vacant states after the hosts leave. This work is motivated by the emotional traumathat the author experienced. The purpose is to explore the author’s experience of trauma through this study “After the Empty Field-Space, Gender, and Symbols’’, re-examining the aesthetic integration and its interpretations as embodied in the “appropriation’’ and “bricolage’’ of symbols like gender symbols, complex symbols, patriarchal remnants, hero projections, money games, and other in the interior space of the motel from the viewpoint of women. Through the creation of the artwork, the author, when being in this space, uses the photography media to reframe the window, observe it, and gain understanding and inspiration. Through this, the author obtains the effect of self-healing in artistic creation. The author will also discuss the psychological impact and the process of transforming the image aesthetics into practical creation through engaging in the creation of space in the motel, deconstructing and analyzing the special space culture in Taiwan’s motels, where “heterogeneity’’ and multidimensional spatial traits that are out of touch are also explored.

Even after the empty field, the traces, the odors, the food, and the wrinkling of the bedsheet left by the hosts as reflected in the ‘‘inside’’, ‘‘outside’’, ‘‘virtuality’’, and ‘‘reality’’ in the mirror all echoed the author’s creative thinking. In addition, the study will be supplemented by the works and expositions of three representative photographic art creators, resonating the author’s creative style, combing out the context and relatedness of the creation, entering the author’s viewing process, and transforming it into the practice of image aesthetics and self-reporting.