Contemporary And (C&) Cyclopedia | Launch​
 

In partnership with BAND Gallery, Gallery TPW is thrilled to welcome Contemporary And (C&) to Toronto in October! 

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During the week of October 22nd, BAND Gallery and Gallery TPW will host a series of events to launch the C& Cyclopedia, immersing the Toronto arts community in dialogue surrounding accessible, digital archival processes as they relate to the arts of Africa and the Global Diaspora.

Please see Public Programming for more information!

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Contemporary And (C&), the award-winning platform for international perspectives on contemporary art, announces the launch of the C& Cyclopedia: a new, freely accessible, searchable source of knowledge on contemporary art that puts the Global Majority at the center.
 

For more than a decade, C& has been building a unique archive of essays, interviews, reflections, and documentation from artists, curators, writers, and communities across Africa and the Global Diaspora. Now, for the first time, this wealth of knowledge is brought together in one place. With over 11,000 articles, images, sounds, and people, the C& Cyclopedia makes knowledge not only available, but truly discoverable.
 

Unlike conventional databases, the C& Cyclopedia enables users to follow connections across geographies and generations, between artists and discourses, histories and futures. Its layered, combinable search functions allow for unexpected results. Search “Afrofuturism +  Lagos + sound,” for example, and you might uncover a chain of essays, interviews, and artworks that reframes what you thought you knew. Or explore a curator’s name to see their work not in isolation, but in dialogue with movements, exhibitions, and practices that shaped them.

At the core of the project is a conviction: archives are not neutral. What gets preserved, how it is presented, and whose voices are amplified reflects existing power structures. The C& Cyclopedia challenges those structures by creating a tool that is critical, credible, and culturally grounded, opening pathways to knowledge often overlooked — or erased — by dominant platforms.
 

The C& Cyclopedia is free and open to all: for researchers, educators, artists, curators, journalists, students, and anyone curious about culture today.
 

“The C& Cyclopedia is more than just another search tool,” says Yvette Mutumba, co-founder and director of C&. “It’s a new epistemology — one that insists on multiplicity, unfinished stories, and transformative connections. It is not a mirror of existing systems, but a challenge to them.”
 

The C& Cyclopedia has been made possible with generous support from the Mellon Foundation, the largest supporter of the arts and humanities in the United States.