00:00Fuel is precious, clay is fragile, and fire is unpredictable.
00:06But in Cape Town, one ceramic artist pours combustibles into clay.
00:11Not to waste, but to awaken.
00:14Lutem Golombane isn't just shaping clay.
00:17He's setting fire to tradition and sculpting stories that burn with meaning.
00:22I love texture, like really rough texture.
00:25And sometimes, you know, placing rough and smooth next to each other.
00:30Work is about people, my surroundings.
00:33It's figurative. There's so many aspects of life.
00:36Lutem Golombane's Xhosa heritage is central to his work.
00:40And he grew up in a rural village named Tata in the Eastern Cape,
00:44making his own toys from wire, wood and river clay.
00:48We used to make cows, make small cars.
00:52Looking back, this is what informed or kind of inspired my journey into art.
01:00The horns, they come up in my pieces.
01:03Sometimes it's the fool, the fool cow.
01:07Sometimes it's sitting on a shoulder.
01:09The cow, for me, it represents the homestead.
01:13Combustibles in clay?
01:15Lutwe adds dry leaves, pine needles and seeds to his clay.
01:19This can act as a fuel source to lower firing costs.
01:23But for Lutwe, it creates the texture, tension and truth his sculptures demand.
01:29Those combustible materials, they will burn away.
01:32They change the structure of the clay.
01:34It opens up pores and it leaves this mark on the surface that I really like.
01:39I add oxides for the second fire and it really brings out the texture.
01:43Lutwe took his passion for rough finishes to another level as a student living in Kabeha's inner city.
01:50There's a lot of drugs and homelessness.
01:54And so you would see a person that is alive, but they're not.
02:00I don't want to call people zombies, but you know, to that effect.
02:04And then discovering wet firing, it was just the perfect texture that I was looking for to, you know, tell the story of inner city dwellers.
02:13His lecturers at Nelson Mandela University didn't agree.
02:17In fact, they forbade wet firing in their kilns.
02:21They were saying that the pieces will break.
02:23They will explode because the steam won't be able to escape.
02:28So I would fire my pieces over weekends.
02:32And I had to sneak into the glazed room.
02:37Yes, now I'm confessing blood.
02:40I didn't stop breaking the rules.
02:44And it still works.
02:47I've never broken a piece.
02:48Lutwe moved to Cape Town in 2022, where commercial and community galleries appreciate his expressionist style.
02:57And a residency at Inuso Ceramics presented a special opportunity.
03:02I've done a solo exhibition titled Awan Ranawam Kuba, which means children of the soil.
03:11Inspired by childhood memories.
03:14My daughter as well, she has like this big hair.
03:18And so you will find her in most of the sculptures.
03:23Today, Lutwe's work is featured in the Spear Arts Trust's Grounded Practice Exhibition.
03:30A coop that will certainly open doors for him.
03:33These three pieces are from a body of work that will be titled Um Nombo, which is, you know, lineage.
03:45The idea is to have 54 as an installation.
03:48This body of work is me trying to learn more about where I come from, to illustrate the faceless people that came before me.
03:57One person said that it reminds her of, you know, motherhood and the scars that, you know, you live with from childbirth.
04:07One lady was even saying the reminder of the Virgin Mary.
04:13But yes, maybe there is deep within me some scars that needed to come out, but maybe that I don't want to talk about.
04:23Visiting the forge of Conrad Hicks is always fruitful.
04:26The two men share a need to push boundaries and an elemental connection where fire meets iron and tradition meets innovation.
04:36Clare and metal are really earth transformed by heat.
04:42And when you're forging, basically it's material that you're squashing.
04:45It's the same as working with clay.
04:47And so the marks and the forms are very similar.
04:51You have to really understand your techniques so that you can push them.
04:55And when you push them to breaking the rules, then you start using them to speak, to say things.
05:02Your subconscious starts speaking.
05:04And that's a beautiful beauty.
05:06If you notice, there's metals that are included in here.
05:11Some as stitches, maybe to hold the scar.
05:16I can't say that I chose to do art.
05:19It chose me its food for my soul.
05:23In every burn, every crack, every mounted edge, Lutwe leaves a message.
05:30Our stories are not fragile.
05:32They are forged in the fire.
05:35His art is a call to remember, to express, and to rejoice in who we are.
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