A recent spate of TV shows set in Missouri show the state as a cultural imaginary on the fault line of US political debate

Exotic flora and tentative ‘Afronauts’ speak to a sense of alienation, but throughout the artist’s work runs a current of optimism 

I cut my skin to liberate the splinter evokes the dissonance and precarity of post-apartheid South Africa

A collaborative exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art and Art + Practice, Los Angeles, explores the lesser-known ephemeral works of the sculptor

Landing only months before the US midterm elections, it’s impossible not to understand the show foremost in the context of the Trumps and Kushners of the world

US true crime series Unsolved takes two formative pop cultural events to explore their concealed human stories and systemic narratives

From The X-Files to The Orville to Black Mirror: what role does sci-fi play in our age of fake news?

‘A countercultural beacon’: Ian Bourland reflects on the artist’s remarkable, six-decade career

Various venues, New York, USA

A year marked by new visualizations, both controversial and celebrated, of the black body

The removal of the Confederate monuments in Baltimore shows decisiveness after years of inaction – already they stand as sites of counter-memory

On the anniversary of the 2016 Orlando massacre, Brendan Fernandes reclaims the dancefloor as a site of resistance

Casey Kaplan, New York, USA

Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, USA

A history of underground Black publishing, from W.E.B. Du Bois to #BlackLivesMatter

Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town & Johannesburg, and blank projects, Cape Town, South Africa

Pace Gallery, New York, USA

A fresh look at the music and art of the black radical tradition