ARTEXPRESS Interviews 2020 - Hayden Johnson De-Silva 
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HAYDEN JOHNSON DE SILVA: My name is Hayden Johnson de Silva. And I studied visual arts at Wyndham College, New South Wales. 
My body of work is all about individuality and the privilege test to see if individuality can be defined by privilege. The body of work consists of a chiffon sheet that has images printed up, a book that I created that has images and information, along with a website that details everything that I had to go through, including a link to the privilege test and the different types of privileges that you will be based off. 
The title of my work is 'APON,' which stands for 'Are You Privileged or Not.' I chose this title because, using the privilege test, it was interesting to see how everyone had a different privilege. And some of them actually really surprised me. 
In the website, there are everyone's different profiles, including their name, their interest, and their privilege score. And I changed every image to black and white and inverted it so that you couldn't see any differences in the people and everyone just looked the same. 
The reason I decided to make this body of work is because I've always been interested in individuality. And the privilege test has always just fascinated me because there are so many people that I would expect to have one type of privilege, and it'd come up with something completely different. 
I love to take photographs of people. So I figured I would stick to my strength and use photography. From there, I was using my tech skills to build a website that I could use, and use an application to create a book that I would have printed up. 
The privilege test was a relevant topic of my generation. Because once one person found out about it, it just spread like wildfire, and everyone wanted to do it. And everyone was just interested to see each other's privilege. 
Originally, when I was trying to come up with people to photograph, I was looking at what events were coming up and seeing who would be there, and then just taking my camera along and asking people if they would be happy with me taking photos of them, and then asked them if they could answer some few questions and email them to me. And then once I had all the images, all I had to do was edit them and then put them in the website. 
For my body of work, the chiffon banner is five metres by one metre. So it is the biggest part of my body of work. And I chose it because it's this really almost clear fabric. You can see through it but you can still print things on it. And it's commonly used in curtains. 
But I just used it because of how opaque it is. The images that were printed on the chiffon inverted in black and white. Because not only does it make the people unidentifiable, but it also makes them all look the same. 
And I put the binary code with it because technology is such a big thing with today's world. And everything on a computer is just a series of ones and zeros. So that's why I turned their privilege scope into binary to represent how important technology is to us today. 
I focused on a few artists in my body of work. But one that really stood out to me was Rene Magritte. And the one that really resonated with me was the image of the man with the apple in front of his face. The apple made it so difficult to figure out who he was, what he was doing, and what stories he had to tell. But I just loved all those surrealism and the different questions that his artwork's left you with. 
When making a body of work, it is so important to have your visual arts diary. That will become almost the Bible for your body of work. It should have everything in it, from brainstorming to inspirations. You need to have photos of what you want to do, sketches, little cut-outs, if you want. But it is just so important to have it there for you because then you can keep referring back to it. 
And eventually at the end you can see where you started and where you ended. And it's just fascinating to see the journey that you took. 
Now that I've done my body of work and I'm out of school, I'm following the career path to become a photojournalist because I realised that writing articles is one thing I love, but taking photographs is just another thing that I love. And it's such a big part of who I am. And I just love being behind the camera and seeing people's faces light up and capturing that one moment that could be lost forever. 
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