Sneha Shrestha (artist)

Sneha Shrestha (स्नेहा श्रेष्ठ) is a Nepali contemporary visual artist, street artist, educator, and arts administrator. She is known for starting the Children's Art Museum of Nepal, and for her graffiti art, using the handle IMAGINE.

Biography
Shrestha was born in Kathmandu, Nepal. After graduating in 2010 from Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Shrestha moved to Boston, Massachusetts. She earned a master's degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2017.

Shrestha works at the Mittal Institute at Harvard University, as an arts program manager. Her signature for her graffiti work is "IMAGINE," which is her mother's name translated into English.

Children's Art Museum of Nepal
Shrestha founded the Children's Art Museum of Nepal in 2013 with support from World Learning.

Graffiti
In her graffiti work, Shrestha uses the Nepali alphabet, taking inspiration from Sanskrit scriptures. Shrestha calls these works "calligraffiti," a portmanteau of calligraphy and graffiti.

She has painted numerous murals in Cambridge and Boston, including "For Cambridge With Love From Nepal," "Saya Patri (The One With A Hundred Petals)," "Knowledge is Power" at Northeastern University, and around the world in Kathmandu, Istanbul, and Bali.

She has also collaborated with companies including Reebok, as part of their Artist's Collective collection, as well as TripAdvisor, Red Bull, and Boston craft brewery Aeronaut Brewing Company.

Awards and honors
In 2018, she was Boston's Artist-in-Residence. In 2019, she was one of the artists selected for the Boston Museum of Fine Art's Community Arts Initiative Artist Project.

Her work is held in the private collections of Capital One, Fidelity Investments, Google, and Facebook.

Solo exhibitions

 * 2019: Golden Equinox, Simmons University Trustman Gallery.
 * 2019: Mindful Mandalas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
 * 2018: MANTRA: Sneha Shrestha, Distillery Gallery, Boston.