Inside a gilded frame, a triptych of micro-figures punctuate a minimalist black square. Carved in precious stones and gold from the I-lands of Aotearoa, these origin-coded materials carry geological time and connections to whenua and ancestral histories. Emerging from the dark as first-forms and icons, the figures evoke spirits, ancestors, creation stories and otherworlds. In the language of painting, the naked pronous occupy a ground of black velvet, reclaiming a material once used to project the European male gaze onto Pacific women. Their sovereign autonomy resists and reconfigures that exoticising gaze.

On the wall of Palazzo Bembo, facing the Grand Canal and looking towards the Rialto, Harmony is encircled by laurel leaves, native to the Mediterranean and associated with healing. Scaled and positioned to encompass the viewer's head, the gilded frame bestows upon each viewer a laurel crown, a Classical symbol of victory and peace. Positioned on this Venetian mercantile axis, the I-land figures are protected within the frame and held beyond reach. Against Venice's legacies of colonial expansion, extraction and the circulation of precious materials, withholding becomes a refusal of possession.

Bringing geological, ancestral, human and biological registers into relation and resonance, Harmony expands the idea of unity beyond the human towards a planetary-cosmic consciousness – a proposition advanced by Ukrainian philosopher Dr Halyna Berehova. Outside the frame, the miniature sculpture fits in the palm of a child's hand. United, the tiny I-columns become micro-foundations for macro-ideas.