From Shipping Container to Art Gallery

Art Itinerant

Formentera, April 11, 2026

This year Formentera will feature a unique cultural proposal that combines photography, historical memory, and the creative reuse of spaces. Photographer and journalist Pam Spitz will launch Art Itinerant, an exhibition project that will transform a shipping container into a traveling art gallery.

The initiative will be presented in mid-June in the garden of the house of sa Senieta, the historic space located on Pla del Rei street in Sant Francesc. The first exhibition of the project will open there, bringing to the public an important photographic archive about the island’s seafaring life.

The exhibition will bring together images by French photojournalist Hélène Henry, who portrayed the lives of Formentera’s fishermen in the mid-20th century. Her photographs will allow viewers to rediscover scenes of work at sea and everyday moments that were part of the island’s identity for decades.

In addition to its artistic value, the proposal will also aim to recover visual heritage and bring it closer to the public in accessible spaces. With this format, Spitz will continue exploring new ways of taking art beyond traditional exhibition circuits.

Art Inside a Shipping Container

Pam Spitz recently presented the Art Itinerant project, a pioneering initiative in Formentera that will turn a shipping container into a mobile art gallery. The idea arose from the difficulty of finding an exhibition space on the island that could be rented year-round at an affordable price.
Faced with this situation, the photographer decided to purchase a container and adapt it as an exhibition room. Thanks to this solution, the project will be able to move and be installed in different parts of Formentera depending on the season or the needs of each exhibition.

The first installation will take place at sa Senieta, a site with strong historical value within Sant Francesc. This location will host the premiere of the project and mark the beginning of a journey that could extend to other places on the island.

Hélène Henry: Opening Exhibition

The opening exhibition will be dedicated to the work of French photojournalist Hélène Henry, born in Morocco and closely linked to Formentera for many years. Henry worked as a journalist for several French media outlets and documented part of the island’s everyday life with her camera.
Her images, taken in black and white and in medium format, portrayed fishing activity and the most ordinary moments in the fishermen’s lives. They show days at sea, encounters between sailors, torradas, and simple scenes that today form part of Formentera’s collective memory.

The exhibition will allow visitors to see these photographs decades after they were taken, offering a direct glimpse into a time before the island’s major tourism transformations.

300 Photographs Will See the Light

One of the most notable aspects of the project will be the recovery of 300 previously unpublished photographs by Hélène Henry. The images remained stored for years by Mari Rivares, the photographer’s daughter, until Pam Spitz discovered them while searching for archival material for another exhibition.
When she began reviewing the negatives, Spitz realized they represented visual heritage of great value for the island. From that moment on, she devoted many hours to scanning, cleaning, and digitally restoring each image.

The opening of the exhibition will also coincide with the publication of the catalogue Entre redes y olas, published by Naufragio, which will bring together this extensive collection of photographs and help preserve this documentary legacy.

Outdoor Artwork

The project will also pay close attention to the gallery’s exterior appearance. To reduce the visual impact of the container in a setting as unique as sa Senieta, Belgian artist François Mennes, who has lived in Formentera since 1968, will intervene on its exterior surface.
Mennes will paint the container with motifs inspired by the local landscape, recreating the appearance of a dry-stone wall. In this way, the structure will blend more naturally into its surroundings, and the container itself will become part of the artistic proposal.
Thus, the gallery will not only offer cultural content inside, but will also become an artistic piece visible from the outside.