The Great Basin Murders

The Great Basin Murders is a collaborative exhibition of weavings by Lily Martina Lee and photography by Carrie Quinney. The Great Basin Murders are a loose grouping of homicides spanning the 1970’s to 1990’s in which women were found killed and dumped along the region’s highways, most of which are still unsolved today.

Lee creates weavings by developing original patterns using data from each case including height, weight and age estimates as well as the date and GPS coordinates of when and where each victim was located. The density of the weaving communicates the postmortem interval. While this work is an attempt to broach the anonymity of unidentified human remains through devotional craft, the resulting woven panels remain visually austere illustrating the absence of information that characterizes many cold cases. Through weaving these shrouds Lee seeks to give the victims a gesture of respect not previously afforded to them.

Through digital photography Quinney documents the woven shrouds at the sites where each victim was found, stylistically bridging crime scene documentation and landscape photography. These images position the shrouds as bodies, contextualizing the series art historical movements considering violence against women from Renaissance and Baroque paintings to contemporary participatory art addressing social issues, all against the backdrop of the  ever foreboding, mysterious and beautiful Western desert.