In this episode of The Emergence Room, we sit down with Michela Palermo, an artist, photographer, publisher, and the 2025–26 Fondazione Sicilia Affiliated Artist at the American Academy in Rome. She is also the founder of Palermo Publishing, an independent publishing project working across photography, visual art, and critical thought.
We talk with Michela about her emergent journey through photography and publishing, and the ways her practice has expanded from making her own work to creating structures for working with and alongside other artists. Our conversation moves through feminism, collaboration, autonomy, authorship, and what it means to take greater agency over how creative work is made, framed, documented, and circulated.
During Open Studios at the American Academy, Michela brought these ideas to life through books, catalogues, photographs, and printed matter, revealing publishing as much more than a record of what has already happened. A publication can capture a particular moment, preserve the thinking and creative practices of a time, and become a reference point through which we can look back and consider what has changed, what has endured, and what remains unresolved.
Together, we explore publishing as an artistic and collaborative practice in its own right, the relationships that form around making and sharing work, and what can emerge when artists claim greater authorship over the ways their stories, ideas, and creative histories enter the world.