CVAD’s Binod Shrestha Named IAA Fellow for Theatrical Project in Nepal

With support from the Institute for the Advancement of the Arts, three University of North Texas professors will embark on ambitious creative research projects as 2025–26 IAA Fellows. Among them is Binod Shrestha, professor and director of the Foundations program in the College of Visual Arts and Design, whose project bridges performance, memory, and visual art on an international stage.

Shrestha will create a 30- to 60-minute theatrical production in Kathmandu, Nepal, featuring more than 40 performers and community participants. The work draws on his personal experiences and research into inherited memory and violence — forces that leave lasting marks on the body, mind, and environment.

“Violence plays a very important role in world politics and history. The history of humanity is the history of violence,” Shrestha said. “I’m thinking about how that shapes us as people.”

The production will be filmed and infused with multimedia elements, including drawings, soundscapes, and fabricated art objects. After its premiere run in Nepal, Shrestha plans to exhibit these elements in galleries in Boston and Dallas, offering CVAD students opportunities to engage directly with his process. He describes the project as a multi-sensory experience designed to immerse audiences in his exploration of trauma and resilience.

“I’m interested in how other artists frame these topics across different mediums, whether on a canvas or through a camera frame,” Shrestha said. “I tend to do installation work and sometimes temporary work, so this approach became a natural way for me to think about these subjects.”

Shrestha is the inaugural director of CVAD’s Foundations program, which introduces all first-year art and design students to the principles of studio practice. An interdisciplinary artist working across various media, he has received over a dozen awards, grants, and residencies. He was awarded the 2025 Otis and Velma Davis Dozier Travel Grant and, in 2023, received the Master Educator Award from Foundations in Art: Theory and Education, where he served as vice president of development from 2023 to 2025.

Additional recipients of IAA Fellowships are Josh Gilbert, assistant professor of practice in media arts in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, who plans to create a short film, and Sungji Hong, associate professor of composition in the College of Music, who will create a new chamber work for multiple instruments.

Launched in 2009, the IAA advances excellence in the visual, performing, creative, and literary arts at UNT. The Faculty Fellows program enables professors to devote a semester to intensive creative projects that enrich their teaching, deepen their scholarship, and expand UNT’s national profile.