Adrienne Walker Hoard began her long relationship with South Africa’s Ndzundza Ndebele people in 1996. The country was settling into democratization, and she would observe over two decades of visits how it impacted the life and art of the Ndebeles' exceptionally creative women.

It has been a profound experience. “I feel because I came to these women openly … as just another woman artist of color who expresses life abstractly, they have guided me in their ways of seeing and knowing the world,” Hoard says.

An artist and professor emeritus of fine art and black studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Hoard discusses her experiences and her exploration of Ndebele culture in the Library exhibit New Democracy Art: A South African Saga of Women, Art, and Identity.