Love and Maya
By Cassie Sun | Contributor
Sporting clear-framed glasses and curly-haired space buns that glow in the 4 p.m. sun, Sneha Shrestha embodies the creative thoughtfulness behind her moniker as an artist: IMAGINE.
“I wanted to choose a name that kept my family at heart,” explained the 35-year-old Nepali artist. “My mother’s name is Kalpana in Nepali, and that translates to imagine in English, so every time I finish a piece I bear the responsibility of creating a piece worthy of putting my mom’s name on.”
Shrestha worked hard to live up to those high standards: despite the light pink bandage wrapped around her sprained right wrist, she shows no signs of slowing down with her solo art show “Love and Maya” opening at the Boston Children’s Museum on Aug. 7, 2022.
The interactive exhibit features two paintings: one with “Love” written in English, the other marked “Maya,” the Nepali word for love.
“This show is about love, and how it has no boundaries,” Shrestha said. Her work frequently draws on themes of learning and language, she said, inspired by her own experiences with English and her native language, Nepali.
“When I first came [to America], I didn’t speak American English. And a lot of things weren’t translated for me,” she said.
Now, she’s able to communicate through her art.
“[The] majority of my murals are in Nepali. It’s never translated for people under the side of the mural or something like that,” Shrestha said. “And that’s because it’s important for a different cultural aesthetic to be appreciated. [One] that’s not in the mainstream.”
Shrestha said that growing up, she never liked school. From moving schools to moving countries, experiencing culture shocks and communication barriers, Shrestha quite often found herself asking the question: “What the hell is going on?”
"I was still navigating how people perceive me, who makes fun of my accent, and what racism was,” she said. “I didn't experience that when I was in Nepal. And that was something that nobody gives you a heads up on.”
Soon, however, the freelance artist was able to take control of her life and prioritize the things—or people—who mean the most to her.
“For a lot of Asian families, you have these set standards of what success means. You know what I’m talking about,” she said. “For me, success means [I’m] be able to see my family whenever I want.”
And family, Shrestha said, was what sparked her enthusiasm for creating spaces where children can express themselves—from establishing the Nepal Children’s Art Museum with her mother in 2014 to adding hands-on, interactive elements for kids in “Love and Maya.”
When asked about the lessons she hopes children take away from the exhibit, Shrestha shared what she’s learned about language and culture.
“If you see other kids around you speaking different languages, you can still play with them. You can still interact with them,” she said. “They're not scary because they're different. They're not any less or more than you because they speak a different language.”
It’s sound advice from an artist who has learned to reconcile, rather than translate her “two worlds,” and it’s clear that she plans to continue sharing with her art.
“Choosing my native language gave me a way to be authentic with my part of the culture,” Shrestha said. “I can say 'these are Nepali letters. And this is how I stylize it, this is how I write it.’ And that's my compass."
“Love and Maya” will be open from Sunday, August 7 to Sunday, November 13 at the Boston Children’s Museum. Sneha Shrestha (IMAGINE) can be found on Instagram @imagine876 and on her website at imagine876.com. Engineering for the exhibit is done in collaboration with Black Cat Labs at blackcatlabs.xyz.
