Elle created the Ophelia series during part two of a two-part mentorship program with artist and teacher Connie Solera. After completing the first PAINT FEARLESS mentorship in 2022, Elle joined the intensive BODY OF WORK cohort in 2023, where she worked alongside other artists creating the work that came directly from their artists’ souls.

This series is part of a group exhibition hosted by Connie Solerawhich ran from June 16 through August 8, 2023

The Ophelia series began when I taught Hamlet to a group of Deaf high school students in 2017. Ophelia’s treatment by various performances of the tragedy prickled my brain, and the common reference to her grief-stricken final scene as “madness” have not let me rest in the intervening years.

Ophelia uses the symbolism of flowers (the so-called feminine) to speak truth to power (the patriarchy). She is a truth teller; however, the frames we have for storytelling don’t have space for that. In Joseph Campbell, women are relegated to madonnas or whores, sirens or saints. “Get thee to a nunnery,” Hamlet says, as Ophelia is used and cast aside. The in-betweenness her character is forced to occupy doesn’t exist.

She deserves better. We deserve better. This is for all the times madness is truth, when it is beautiful, when it’s the appropriate response to the “rotten state of Denmark”: our partners, homes, and countries are bent on murderous intent and everyone stays smiling.

My name is Elle Billing; I am an artist, writer, and caregiver. Making art is how I filter a continuous stream of information, through the particular lens of my queer disabled bodymind.

Currently, I am interested in exploding the archetypes available to women and femmes in the so-called western literary canon. I am reconstructing characters’ experiences through mixed media with a focus on vintage texts and contemporary themes. The materials I am most excited by are vintage books, acrylic paint, soft pastels, and powerful pop vocalists.

I am also deeply fascinated with the concepts of infinity, the multiverse, and alternate timelines. In the studio you will find me deconstructing old books, making my own collage paper, and infusing my work with the power of story.

Hamlet, by William Shakespeare

Hamlet, 2009, Royal Shakespeare Company/BBC, starring David Tennant and Sir Patrick Stewart

Dance Fever, Florence and the Machine

Soundtracks from Encanto, Frozen, Wicked, Moana

Resources on the language and symbolism of flowers from Elizabethan to modern times

Monomyth, Joseph Campbell

Hannah Gadsby’s stand-up comedy, particularly her work on art history and misogyny

Everything, Everwhere, All at Once (2022 film)

Marvel’s Loki series

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, by Tom Stoppard