As a white woman artist working decades before the formal emergence of Black Modernism, Laubser nonetheless occupies an “adjacent” position in this exhibition. Her work participates in the broader project of forging a modern South African visual language, yet it also reflects the racial and class hierarchies of its time: labouring Black bodies often appear as anonymous types within idealised landscapes. In this exhibition, Harvesting Freestate is deliberately placed in relation to Ngatane’s township scenes and the more self-determined figures of Sebidi and Sibiya. This juxtaposition invites viewers to consider who is represented as subject versus backdrop, and how the same land holds radically different experiences. At the same time, Laubser’s expressive distortions and attention to spiritual atmosphere anticipate later Black artists’ use of landscape as a carrier of emotion and history, underscoring the complex entanglements of South African modernism.