Contemporary And (C&)  is a global network and community platforming contemporary art and culture from Africa and its Diaspora. Since 2013, C& has built fluid pathways between the continent and its worldwide diaspora through digital and on-the-ground initiatives— including two online magazines in four languages, free education programs, a traveling reading room, and now the C& Cyclopedia; a growing networked database of 11,000 texts, images, videos and recordings showcasing the breadth of artistic production across Africa and its Diaspora.

In 2024, Contemporary And (C&) was awarded a major grant from the Mellon Foundation to support the 2-year development of the C& Cyclopedia : a living digital archive designed to make C&’s 10+ years of deep and vast memory accessible, easy to use, and inspiring to engage with. This project completely transforms how C& audiences navigate, experience and draw from the archive that C& has grown over the years.

The C& Cyclopedia is a one-of-a-kind digital resource on visual arts from Africa and the Global Diaspora, catering to researchers, educators, and art enthusiasts alike. With innovative search functions and a user-centric design, the archive goes beyond traditional information-seeking to become a space for true discovery and interaction—a place to explore, learn, and engage with contemporary art.

This living archive sustainably engages C&’s global audiences and expand C&’s reach to new communities. Offering a dynamic platform, the C& Cyclopedia that not only preserves but also amplifies the rich knowledge C& has cultivated, fostering deeper understandings and reshaping narratives of contemporary art from regions of the global majority.

At its core, the C& Cyclopedia is very much a technology project with important political layers. Developing a bias-aware, open-source search prototype that challenges the logics of commercial search engines: their hierarchies of visibility, their linguistic limitations, their claims of neutrality. With the launch of C& Cyclopedia on a new website, C& released the first chapter of this journey.

And there is much more to come…