Sneha Shrestha

Sneha Shrestha (b. 1987, Kathmandu, Nepal) is a Nepal-born, Boston and Kathmandu-based artist known for her paintings and larger-than-life murals that harmoniously blend her native Nepali and Sanskrit language, mantras, sacred sounds used in meditation and prayer, and American graffiti hand styles. Her mural works grace multi-story public walls across the United States and around the globe, from Rotterdam to Cambodia.

After college, Shrestha adopted the handle “Imagine,” her mother’s name translated into English, and began experimenting with writing the Nepali language inspired by graffiti handstyles. Nepali is written in Devanagari script, which is commonly, although erroneously, viewed as lacking aesthetic beauty. Shrestha challenges this perception by emphasizing Devanagari’s calligraphic quality through large, bold letters with sweeping lines and accentuated curves. Her work aims to celebrate and inspire an appreciation for the beauty of Nepali language and culture. Education has always been at the forefront of Shrestha’s work; her passion extends to founding the Children’s Art Museum in Kathmandu in 2013 and receiving her master’s from Harvard University in 2017.

Among many public art projects, she is the artist behind the landmark mural on a building owned by MIT at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Main Street in Cambridge, MA. Her artwork can also be found in the collections of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, the Worcester Art Museum, Google, Facebook, and Fidelity. Notably, her work is also part of the permanent collection at MFA Boston, where she is the first contemporary Nepali artist to be collected by the institution. Recent exhibitions include the solo show Ritual and Devotion, Cantor Arts Gallery, College of the Holy Cross (2024), and participation in the group exhibitions Deities of Nepal II, Nepal Arts Council (2024) and Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now, The Rubin Museum (2024), traveling in later 2024 to Wrightwood659 in Chicago. In 2025, she will complete a public art project in partnership with The Rubin Museum for New York City’s Department of Transportation Temporary Art Program. 

She was recently selected for a Studio Residency at the Boston Center for the Arts. Her additional honors include a grant from Collective Futures Fund (2024); inclusion in WBUR The ARTery’s 25 Millennials of Color (2019); recognition as one of the 100 most influential women in Nepal by the Nepal Cultural Council (2018); a Boston Artist-in-Residence Award (2018); the HUBWeek Change Maker Award (2018); South Asia and the Arts Fund Grant, Harvard University (2017); and Project Zero Artist-in-Residence Award, Harvard University (2017).