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Clamra Célestin
Devoted Collector, Ancestral Guardian
Interview by Joshua Dimondstein
more than fi fteen years, I now know him better.
I look forward to reading his memoir, scheduled
to be published in English at the end of this year
by Ohio University Press. The French version,
titled Fils du Ciel: De Kindiri à Manhattan, was
published by l’Harmattan in Paris in 2011.
Joshua Dimondstein: Tell us about your
involvement with African tribal art and how it
affects your life today.
Clamra Célestin: I fi rst saw African art as
African fetishes. And by fetishes I mean
sculptures that could overcome harmful forces,
both animate and inanimate. I grew up with
the art in this context and still feel that it is
part of my DNA.
When I was four years old I contracted
malaria, as I did many times in my youth. In
my village we had a medicine man named
Yonda. He had many fetishes, both statues and
masks. When people were sick they would go
to his house and he would care for them. So
whenever I had malaria my parents would take
me to Yonda and I would stay with him for a
couple of days. The fetishes were there and were
part of the treatment. Every time I recovered,
I and everybody else in the village believed
that the fetishes were a large part of the cure.
The treatments were a secret and you’d see the
fetishes only when he was using them to cure.
FIG. 1 (above): Pipe bowl.
Bamun, Grasslands,
Cameroon.
Terracotta.
Ex Werner Muensterberger.
FIG. 2 (below): Clamra
Célestin, New York, 2017.
The large Songye fi gure is
ex Allan Stone.
Photo: Joshua Dimondstein.
TRIBAL people
In the following interview Clamra
Célestin tells us about his lifelong involvement
with African tribal art, from his boyhood in
Chad to his present life in New York and Paris.
His early experiences with the art as healing implements
offer insights beyond those collectors
usually have. And his observations from the perspective
of an African collector provide us with
food for thought.
Clamra’s life as a collector is indeed a case
study. From his early years of buying contemporary
African sculpture to satisfy a hunger for the
art to his advanced connoisseurship of African
tribal art, his story contains much to which we
can relate. As happens with so many of us, there
was a turning point after which he was able to
recognize authentic ritually used ancestral art. In
his case, this happened during his apprenticeship
with famed collector Werner Muensterberger.
Clamra’s sense of purpose as a collector and ancestral
guardian has freed him from the confl icts
often found in the pursuit of collecting tribal
art. He is a dedicated collector who continues
to learn, trusts his instincts, and remembers his
raison d’être.
Clamra and I met for this interview in his fl at
in New York City. Though we’ve been friends for