PARIS.- Well known for more than a decade as the world’s premier international tribal art fair that maintains the highest standards for the select material offered there, Parcours des Mondes broadened its scope last year to include fine Asian art and will continue to do so this year, when it is open to the public September 6–11, 2016. Once again, Parcours des Mondes will offer collectors and enthusiasts alike the opportunity to experience remarkable treasures of Oceanic, African, and Native American art, as well as both classical and contemporary Asian art creations.

While Parcours de Mondes is always innovative, it is anchored in Paris’ historic Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood. From Rue Guénégaud to Rue des Beaux Arts by way of Rue Visconti, visitors to this art fair will discover a wonderfully stimulating version of the Left Bank, brought to life by sculptures, ancestor figures, and spirit masks. The excitement that results from this exotic atmosphere sets the neighborhood alight and makes Parcours des Mondes a not-to-be-missed event for art lovers.

As it does every year, Parcours des Mondes will feature a number of exhibitions produced by art dealers from France and the world over. These provide its visitors an incomparable opportunity to gain new perspectives about the aesthetic expressions of faraway peoples. Among the many special exhibitions planned for 2016 are one focused on African subjects including Bwiti reliquaries at Galerie Benard Dulon and Kongo fetishes at Galerie Lecomte, as well as an exploration of the strange world of "Monsieur X" by Serge Le Guennan. Yann Ferrandin will feature a show titled "Hair", which will be devoted to the coiffures and hair ornaments produced by tribal societies that will certainly be met with interest.

Galleries specializing in North American and Oceanic art also plan a number of exciting thematic exhibitions. Donald Ellis Gallery’s exhibition will include an exceptional model tepee, and Michael Evans will present an exhibition titled "Savage Island: the Art of Niue". Galerie Flak will focus on shamanic masks and sculptures from Alaska and Siberia.

Offerings by Asian art dealers will be equally abundant. Four galleries—Christophe Hioco, Eric Pouillot, Alexis Renard, and Kapoor Galleries Inc.—will join forces on Rue de Seine to produce an important exhibition devoted to the arts of Asia. As they stroll through the streets of the fair, collectors and aficionados will want to stop and admire the sumptuous works offered by Max Rutherston Ltd, a dealer specialized in Japanese art and netsuke. Gregg Baker Asian Art and Kitsune Gallery, both specializing in Japanese art, will return to the show again this year. Their continued participation emphasizes Parcours des Mondes’ commitment to promoting the highest level of dealers in this field.

Parcours des Mondes always hosts an array of foreign galleries. 2016 will be no exception, and the show will continue to maintain its distinctly international flavor. Eighty-four galleries of worldwide renown, including twelve from the United States and sixteen from Belgium, will show at this 15th Parcours des Mondes.

A retrospective exhibition celebrating the 15th anniversary of Parcours des Mondes will be organized by Tribal Art magazine and shown at Espace Tribal. Featuring original artworks and photographs, it will trace the fair’s evolution and history, feature highlights since its inception in 2001, and examine how it quickly became the “central event” in the tribal art field. It is also an opportunity to honor those, both dealers and collectors, who have contributed to the growth and expansion of Parcours des Mondes over the years.

Aptly enough, the topic of “collecting” will be the focus of this year’s Café Tribal morning meetings with a variety of specialists, hosted and moderated by Elena Martinez-Jacquet, editor-in-chief of Tribal Art magazine. The focus will be on great collectors, and the discussions will center on understanding the particular sensibilities of those who shaped the history of tribal art in the Western world, elevating it to the fine art form it is understood to be today.

The fair’s programming and the many and varied events it regularly sponsors attract new dealers and new collectors with wide-ranging interests. This dynamism also has a palpable effect on the city of Paris itself, which offers programs and events of its own in connection with Parcours. This year, one of those events will be a gala evening put on by the Musée Cernuschi as a benefit for the museum’s Society of Friends.

While maintaining the high standards and eclecticism that forged its identity, Parcours des Mondes continues to develop and evolve in such a way as to be able to offer its visitors the opportunity to discover an ever-broadening scope of fascinating art forms. These spiritually charged works provide a window into the imaginations of other peoples and allow insight into the shared overarching principles that in the past shaped the collective unconscious.

Ritual objects carry within them both the weight and the evanescence of man’s most deep-seated fears that are at the root of the human condition. Life is both given and taken away, and man has unceasingly used art to question in his quest to understand this incomprehensible cycle. The artifact, as a product of the human spirit, is a sign of the ambivalence of the realities we face: the fear of seeing ourselves reduced to nothing and the hope we harbor to transcend our physical disappearance.

Many of the tribal and Asian artworks included in Parcours des Mondes represent attempts to answer universal and timeless questions that, precisely because they never will be answered, make them all the more compelling due to their enduring and unchanging nature.