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DBK Art & Design

@dbk_martyr

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Founder of Raw Material Ent

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Between sunny skies and emotionally charged takes existed a community of warm, friendly and incredibly skilled film professionals!🎬😎And here are some scenes from what went down on set👌🏼

#actress #durban #film #indianindenture #actorlife #behindthescenes #filmmaker #filmmaking #southafrica #reisscene #shortfilm #history #bts #contentcreator #viral #trending #grateful

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In the studio, with purpose 🔥🛠️
Under the skilled hands of Bhekazi Ernest Ngcobo and Andries Botha, cold steel is shaped into something ancient and alive. Piece by piece, weld by weld, they build volume, rhythm and presence — a creature born from memory and endurance 🦏✨

This is more than construction — it’s translation.
Translating spirit into form, history into silhouette, echo into legacy. Each spark is a heartbeat… each curve a reminder of those who walked before us.

Just as Ian Player and Magqubu Ntombela carved pathways into the wilderness 🌍🌿

#rememberingthewilderness #ianplayer #magqubuntombela #conservation #art #activism #southafrica #sculpture #andriesbotha #bhekaziernestngcobo

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🔥🛠️ Craft, Collaboration, and Connection

In this video, Bhekazi Ernest Ngcobo shares what it means to work on this memorial sculpture — to shape something of this scale and purpose, alongside artists and mentors like Andries Botha, in honour of Ian Player and Magqubu Ntombela.

For Ernest, this project is more than making art — it’s about belonging to something larger: a shared commitment to memory, to wilderness, and to the spirit of collaboration that keeps creativity alive. Each spark, each welded seam, carries the mark of human hands and the collective energy of those who believe that making can also be remembering. 🌿🤝

#rememberingthewilderness #ianplayer #magqubuntombela #conservation #art #activism #southafrica #sculpture #andriesbotha #bhekaziernestngcobo

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Every sculpture begins with materials— In this case, Steel ⚒️, Stone 🪨, Fire 🔥. But in this Memorial to Ian Player and Magqubu Ntombela, the materials are more than structure, idea and language — they are symbols and metaphors acknowledging these two particular lives we honour 🌍🐘.

Steel ⚒️ defines strength and resilience, echoing Ian Player’s determination to protect the living wilderness 🌿 and confront impossible challenges.

Stone 🪨 carries wisdom, memory, time and endurance, embodying Magqubu Ntombela’s deep knowledge of the land 🌱 and the traditions that root and define us.

Fire 🔥 transforms raw matter into form, reminding us that change — in art 🎨, in conservation 🦏 and humanity 🤝 — is forged through courage and imagination and suggests transformation is always possible.

These elements are forged together as a single sculpture, 🗿 as a reminder: Memory 🧠 is not abstract. It is weighty, grounded in consciousness, challenging us to hold the past as reference for our present actions in order to create an archival record to assist those yet to be born.

To remember is to take responsibility ✨ — to carry forward strength, wisdom, to ensure transformation, evolution of our own actions.

#rememberingthewilderness #ianplayer #magqubuntombela #conservation #art #activism #southafrica #sculpture #andriesbotha #bhekaziernestngcobo

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🤝 The Power of Collaboration — In Sculpture, In Life, In Conservation 🌍🪨

In both art and the wild, nothing meaningful happens alone.

Sculpture is often seen as a solitary act — a figure at work with tools and stone.
But look closer, and you’ll find that the most enduring works are forged in collaboration.

🛠️ Andries Botha and Bhekazi Ernest Ngcobo — mentor and protégé — show how artistic vision is handed down, reshaped, and reimagined. Ngcobo’s raw, elemental sculptures emerge from the same furnace of purpose that shaped Botha’s elephants — but speak with their own voice.

🌿 Ian Player and Magqubu Ntombela walked together through wilderness — Zulu elder and white conservationist — united not by background, but by belief. That nature heals, and conservation is a spiritual act.

In each of these relationships, collaboration becomes more than teamwork.
It becomes trust, legacy, and a shared act of creation.

💬 Steel learns from stone.
🔥 The young learn from the wise.
🌱 Conservation learns from culture.

Whether shaping monuments or protecting rhinos, these stories remind us:

The future is co-created.
It takes many hands to honour the land.
And legacy is not built in isolation — it’s built in relationship.

#rememberingthewilderness #ianplayer #magqubuntombela #conservation #art #activism #southafrica #sculpture #andriesbotha #bhekaziernestngcobo

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🔨 Who Is Bhekazi Ernest Ngcobo?

🎭 Sculptor. Storyteller.

Bhekazi Ernest Ngcobo is part of a new generation of South African sculptors — one that works with hands, heart, and heritage. A self-taught artist from KwaZulu-Natal, his work speaks of land, memory, and spiritual presence, using raw and reclaimed materials to shape stories into form.

🪵 Apprenticed under renowned sculptor Andries Botha, Ngcobo began as a workshop assistant — but his instinctive feel for form, texture, and meaning quickly made him a collaborator in his own right.

🛠️ He works with steel, tyre strips, wire, wood, cowhide, and earth — materials that carry memory, labour, and history. His sculptures don’t sit passively; they emerge, as if rising from the landscape itself.

🌬️ In pieces like Spiritus Mogale, co-created with sculptor Jessica Bothma in Magaliesburg, Ngcobo uses the four elements — earth, water, fire, air — to reflect ancestral energy and ecological balance. His work is not just seen. It is felt.

🌍 In 2024, Ngcobo took his practice abroad through a residency in Germany, where he exhibited as part of a cross-cultural exchange — but his roots remain deep in South African soil.

Ngcobo’s art is a quiet force:
🌿 Sculptures that hold space.
🪨 Forms that speak of land and lineage.
🔥 Memory made matter.

@dbk_martyr

#rememberingthewilderness #ianplayer #magqubuntombela #conservation #art #activism #southafrica #sculpture #bhekaziernestngcobo

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Andries and Ernest in the studio 💪

@dbk_martyr
#sculpture #sculptor #art #artist #durban #southafrica

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Instead of hunt the Easter Egg, it was hunt the Easter weekend art show venue 😃... Along byways and around circles, past chickens and mealie sellers, and hairstylists under trees. And we all, fans, friends, family, many from far and wide, made it to Jess Bothma's @jessfromthearea Masters Degree art show at the Yellowwood Park Bowling Club, which a couple of us decided, these days and after all the rain, looked more like a crocodile swamp than somewhere anyone, ever, and once-upon-a-time, rolled balls across. The ideal, perfect venue for her Masters theme: scan through the pics and look for the "umbilical cord" entry. She expresses it there. No need for so me to add more. The exhibition was opened by Andries Botha @_andries_botha, who gave a thoughtful and thought-provoking talk. Congrats to this wonderful, creative artist, poet, sculptor, writer. A celebration.
#jessbothma

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Of goddesses and gardens... Seems an apt way to introduce artist-sculptor Dina Cormick's permanent installation that went in today at the AmmaZulu Sculpture Garden, Peter Amm's legacy fantastical garden of delights in Kloof.
Sculptor, friend, and mentor-to-many, Andries Botha, created the space and worked on the structure with Dina. @dbk_martyr was there with his artistic eye and welding torch. Peter Amm's longtime architectural collaborator, Kevin McGarry, was part of the collaborative team.
This metal and ceramic sculpture of Dina's has been a creative evolution. Textures, swirls, goddesses, visits to the scrap metal yard. Further collaborations...
Ask her about it.
Go see it in the gardens.
#ammazulugarden

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Diese Fotos durfte ich von @dbk_martyr im Rahmen des Tag des Denkmals machen wo er als Künstler vertreten war.
Vielen Dank an dich und weiterhin viel Erfolg.
#portrait #portraitphotography

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