Intern Spotlight: Malik John-Marc Purvis

What is your day-to-day like and what has been your favorite experience interning at the MCA?

I have helped coordinate photoshoots with trustees as well as set up meetings with both trustees and outside parties. Naturally, this allows me to interact with a lot of different departments in the museum. Working as an intern inside the Director’s Office has given me a great sense of what Madeleine does as a director and her wide range of duties regarding the structure and functions of the museum.

My favorite part of working here has been the conversations I have with a lot of the staff here; they’re extremely nice and always helpful on career advice.

What’s your favorite show or piece currently on display at the MCA? Why?

My reasons are a bit bizarre, but I'm obsessed with the Witness exhibition at the moment. I've been allured by the almost irreverent yet incredibly sincere work of Andres Serrano, Larry Clark, and, most potently, Rineke Dijkstra.

Some of them may hurt to look at, but they are all very simple ideas that express some of the harsh facts about living and any person looking at them can have a painfully honest experience.

For instance, Rineke’s work, which features a young girl on a beach, shows how icons of art can have an impact on a woman’s self-image. The girl in the photograph’s pose sharply resembles Bottecelli’s Venus. All of Rineke’s beach models pose without instruction from the artist. This automatic response from the model shows (Western) art’s potential to influence the lexicon of femininity through its icons of beauty. For me, this work, and the other works in the show, depict a photography that stakes its place as both a representer of the world as well as an influencer.

University or life experience, which do you feel best prepares you for life?

I feel as though that’s an unfair comparison. I took an extra year of college so I spent a lot of time learning in a classroom, and yet I think that the most valuable things I’ve learned about art and my approach to it has come from life mistakes. On the other hand, had it not been for being at a university, I probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to work as a researcher in the psychology department or act as an officer in my school’s philosophy club all while pursuing my painting major. I gained a lot of personal discovery from both so I see them as part of that as well.