Jordan Bennett’s Souvenir is about memory, recognition, and giving new voice to Indigenous artists past and present

The Rooms | March 28 – August 31, 2026

By Rhea Rollmann

 

It’s the colour that hits you first. 

You don’t realize how drab galleries normally are until you see how colourful they could be. 

And Jordan Bennett’s exhibition Souvenir is awash in colour. 

Not the weak scaredy-cat colours that peek out gently and politely from behind the solidity of sombre black frames and pallid canvases. These are the loud colours, the audacious colours, the screaming violets and deep-eyed greens dancing on bubblegum pink. They’re bright golden arrows bordering amethyst reds so deep you could lose your soul in them; coral pink curlicues laughing playfully on a bed of aqua blue, and cedar leaf green diving on top of them all. There’s purple in the trees and canary corn yellow underground, and that special green hue that emerges for just a few moments each day when early morning sun shines through the spreading leaves of a fern. There’s pixelated grays and sun-yellow circles; there’s alternating triangles and bubbles and ovals and maybe that’s actually a giant stylized moose head? Or maybe not. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, after all, so surely meaning is too. 

Once the initial bright burst of colour wears off the real journey can begin. Because Souvenir is a journey: through the bright cultural wash of Newfoundland Indigeneity. Like all journeys to the island it begins at sea. Souvenir opens with “Where our spirits gather,” a brightly painted ocean mural upon which Beothuk canoes crest multi-hued waves. They are joined by a pair of Mi’kmaq canoes, not painted images but actual miniature birchbark canoe models 175 years old (or more) artfully positioned alongside the mural. 

After the journey, arrival. A blanket greets the visitor—polychromatic welcome in Pendleton wool, one of Bennett’s own works. Enveloped in its symbolic warmth the visitor proceeds. Then the land unfolds: first the sky, a magnificent multi-canvas work in the form of “13 Moons Full Suite,” each canvas depicting one of the phases of the Mi’kmaw lunar calendar. The panoply is stunning: take in first the full expanse of colours stretching down the entire length of the gallery space. Then study each lunar phase individually: “Maple Sugar Moon”; “Birds Lay Eggs Moon”; “Leaves Full Blossom Moon”, and all the rest. I was most taken by the latter, with its striking juxtaposition of pinks and greens; as well as “Rivers About to Freeze Moon” with its arrangement of pinks and purples adorning a frost-laden tree. 

Next, turn the corner for an encounter with the animals that inhabit the land. “Embrace” is Bennett’s 2022 presentation of brightly painted moose antlers; on the wall hangs the equally kaleidoscopic “Netukulit” encompassing both moose antlers and skull. Along the wall are quilled seat panels (but more on them later). 

 

At the heart of Souvenir is conversation—between peoples, between past and present. Bennett places a variety of historical Mi’kmaw and Beothuk objects, including quilled purses, boxes, bone pendants, birchbark canoes, in relation with his contemporary art. The objects, borrowed (liberated, rematriated) from museums across the country, are juxtaposed atop or within Bennett’s own original paintings and craftwork. Past and present are brought together in this exhibit, merging into something new and even more powerful. 

Bennett’s been working on this exhibit for nearly a decade. Early collaborations with museums in Nova Scotia demonstrated to curators the importance of his vision and the care with which he undertook the work, and this opened the door to borrowing more pieces. Many of the Indigenous artifacts in Souvenir aren’t normally on display; they spend much of their time locked away in museum vaults and cabinet drawers, to Bennett’s chagrin. 

“I wanted to create a way for these pieces to come out into the public in a different way, visiting with community, being in conversation with one another and ultimately, coming home to Mi’kma’ki, some for the first time in 150-200 years,” he explained. “The exhibition title Ketu’elmita’jik translates to ‘They want to come home’.”

Some of the items come from his own collection: he and others have been scrutinizing auctions, online bidding sites and antique shops, working hard to find, purchase and bring such items home. 

The power of incorporating older artifacts with new and original art comes through strikingly in the work “an old story. a new story. the same story.” This ceiling-to-floor piece evokes a waterfall, with large multi-hued canvas strips cascading out of the open lid of a 200-year old quilled box down the length of the wall and into the box itself; then the shower of colour erupts out of the box toward the viewer. The piece aptly reflects the ongoing conversation between past and present, but more importantly, underscores that the Indigenous culture and artistry in which it is rooted is something that cannot be contained. It flows forward inexorably, through past and present, in and out of the boxes in which others try to put it.

The second gallery space contains more composite pieces consisting of quilled seat panels anchored to the wall and incorporated into Bennett’s paintings. The effect is mesmerizing. Some of his painting emulates the quilled style itself; only on closer look do you realize it’s brushwork. 

The quilled pieces merit close examination.Formed of dyed porcupine quills stitched and woven together and often hundreds of years old, they look as fresh as if they’d just come off the assembly line (a quality they retain no doubt because they never touched an assembly line). The quillwork is tight, and each piece glistens and shines with a lively vibrancy.

Bennett explained to me that the quillwork seat panels were mostly created for the souvenir market, for wealthy colonizers who wanted to bring pieces back home to Europe with them. 

“These pieces were a way for Mi’kmaw makers to put food on the table,” he explained. “I thought, if these makers had the time and space to go beyond the confines of the chair seat cover, and could extend their work onto a space like a gallery wall, what would that look like? That was the jumping off point for me to think about how to collaborate with these artists, but to do so without the confines of space and time. These quill pieces were made by community, oftentimes more than one person, and I can imagine that it was being done around a kitchen table, over cups of tea and stories. Doing this work I feel like I’m getting a chance to sit and have tea with these ancestor artists, creating and building upon stories started, and continuing today.”

 

“Being able to bring these pieces together breathes new life into these works, connecting them with family members, and what is amazing is that some of the pieces have helped provide that space for this visiting to happen. My friends and fellow Mi’kmaw quill artists Melissa Peter Paul and Cheryl Simon went with me at the Ketu’elmita’jik and got to see their great grandmother’s quillwork in person for the first time. Since then, they have been able to send along other family members to visit with the work as well.”

The bone pendants are also beautifully preserved. My attention was gripped by a Beothuk caribou bone pendant of unknown age. The three tines are adorned with decorative notches and red ochre, and one tine is chipped. It reminds me of a pendant I wore as a teenager. Who last wore this piece? Where and when? How did the piece become chipped? Such moments of shared resonance are what build a sense of connection between peoples, however many years and centuries intervene between them. 

The final portion of the exhibit holds a special treat. In an alcove sits the very chair used in the NL legislature by the province’s first premier, Joseph R. Smallwood. Smallwood and his administration were notorious for denying the presence of Indigenous peoples in the province during Confederation negotiations with Canada, setting the stage for a difficult ongoing struggle for recognition. In the appropriately titled “I’d Like An Explanation,” a brand new piece by Bennett (the title comes from a quote by his cousin Calvin White), Smallwood’s chair sits back-on to the rest of the exhibit, a symbolic denial of the rich and vibrant Indigenous culture that filled the province then and now. Yet Smallwood’s vacant presence is forced to face the music, literally and symbolically, as his chair faces a set of speakers covered in black ashwood strips and sweetgrass. The speakers play audio recorded in Bay St. George.

Bennett’s first encounter with Smallwood’s chair was at an exhibit several years ago, and it inspired his cousin Nelson White to paint the portrait “Reclaiming the Throne” which depicts Bennett sitting on Smallwood’s chair. For Souvenir, Bennett wanted to return to the lingering presence of Smallwood that the chair evokes. 

“Leaving all Indigenous people out of the terms of agreement in 1949 was a decision made by his government, a means of forced erasure to not only Mi’kmaw folks, but to Innu and Inuit folks as well,” he explained. “Since then we have all had to fight for recognition under the Canadian government.”

“Having Smallwood’s chair in the space was an opportunity for me to confront him, his ghost. Playing the sounds of home back to him is a way to say ‘we have been here, we are still here, and we will continue to be here’. If he would only have taken the time to stand up, turn around and see what was here, he would have seen the beauty, strength and resilience of our people. I wanted to sit him down, and make him listen, truly listen and in this installation he doesn’t even get to see the stars above him.”

Bennett’s work is a powerful reminder that in the face of political denial, it is art that often first makes possible the recognition of those truths that politicians and powerbrokers would deny.

The title Souvenir speaks to the fact that the older artifacts were often treated as souvenirs by European colonizers; but in French souvenir is the verb ‘to remember’ and also reflects the powerful political valence of remembrance and recognition. Unlike their settler predecessors, visitors to the exhibit won’t leave with physical souvenirs. But hopefully the memories with which they depart will help shape a new understanding of the powerful Indigenous cultural and artistic heritage of this place.

What happens to the exhibit after it leaves The Rooms on August 31? There’s one more stop in Charlottetown in 2027 and then it’ll be dismantled. The borrowed artifacts will return to the museums from which they came. Much of Bennett’s original artwork on the walls will be painted over.

“In Mi’kmaw understanding, these pieces are alive, they come from living beings, birch bark, spruce root, and porcupines, and being able to bring them out and share time with community members is a profound way to have them live on,” Bennett reflected. “The walls will all be painted over, but they will become part of the history of the Rooms, living below and above so many other artworks and exhibitions in those spaces.”

 

Rhea Rollmann is an award-winning journalist, writer and audio producer based in St. John’s, NL, and is the author of A Queer History of Newfoundland (Engen Books, 2023).