Doddridge Busingye’s work is inspired by his personal experiences. He utilizes vivid hues and poised figures as an agent of self-exploration, discovery, and expression. Busingye meticulously arranges his compositions allowing intent to dictate form giving rise to an evocative body of work.
Abstract concepts and emotions serve as the launching pad for Busingye’s process. He mines both personal and community experiences often looking to the creative output of others for articulation. Gathering inspiration from poetry, music, and film, Busingye encapsulates his thoughts into titles for future works. His concepts become loose outlines of statements, ideological sketches that define his figures and dictate their relationships within their surrounding environment.
The works in Unspoken Feelings and Buried Truths share a certain illusory quality. Busingye renders his figures in velvety blue hues frequently duplicating their form in a singular composition. In Meeting at the Benches (2021), two identical figures are drawn into an exchange with one another. Their bodies are positioned similarly, one leg bent and the other extended, reaffirming their sameness. They steadily hold one another’s gaze expressing divergent but distinct emotions simultaneously. The union of these kindred beings suggests indivisibility, their undeniable likeness yielding to a seemingly surreal environment.
Busingye’s subjects appear to be at odds, unexpectedly caught in an unspoken conversation with themselves. In Two Leaning Girls (2021), this encounter is exhibited by the repetition of the figure. His subjects, though mirrored, are rendered slightly askew from one another lending each an individual distinction. In Muse in Robe (2021), the interchange is comparably understated. Though the figure stares directly into the plane of the viewer, her gaze neither registers nor consents to the viewer. Rather, her subverted glance indicates a certain adulation, one that suggests an acknowledgment of herself or her reflection.
Busingye envisions his subject’s interactions to be the meeting of alter egos, the coming together of complementary forces that make up our beings. His figures, in forging connections with their other halves, expose a rich inner world creating a sense of order among uncertainty and wholeness among counterparts. This quality of self-reflection underlines Busingye’s practice resulting in a collection of work that compels one to question their own sense of self.
Doddridge Busingye (b. 1990) lives and works in Kampala, Uganda. He holds and MFA from Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda and a BA from Kyambogo University Kampala, Uganda. Busingye has also exhibited at The Creative Tribe, Jinja, Uganda. This is Busingye’s first show with Thierry Goldberg Gallery.