Rinsanga Leivang is an artist of Mizo and Bihari descent, currently based in London, United Kingdom. His work explores themes of memory, restriction, childhood, and sexuality, viewed through the lens of South Asian and Queer narratives. Leivang’s practice is rooted in personal and cultural experiences, where the emotional complexities of concealing identity, memory, and self-expression are consistently examined. His use of mixed media, installation, and painting further reinforces these themes, challenging his approach to storytelling.

 

Leivang’s work often serves as a response to the sense of displacement he has experienced as a Queer South Asian navigating different cultural and societal norms. Through his art, he seeks to engage with the tension between visibility and invisibility, expressing the internalised pressure to suppress parts of his identity to assimilate. These pressures manifest in his art as layers of multiple imagery and materials that symbolise the act of concealing, disposing, and revealing the self in complex ways.

 

His recent work explores the tension between preserving memories, both physically and digitally, and understanding the nuances of identity. His practice involves layering visual elements to highlight how his personal hoarding, whether of memories or objects, creates a gradual disconnect, resulting in obscurity. This technique mirrors broader struggles with scarcity mentality and the fear of time slipping away, which contribute to the need to hold onto physical objects and memories as a way of reinforcing identity. By juxtaposing his identity struggles with personal accumulation, Leivang explores how our need to preserve often leads to erasure and distortion, unintentionally complicating the clarity of self-understanding.