From Humanitarian Frontlines to a Brussels Gallery Wall: Meet the Artist Behind Made by Baya

Barbara Kralovicova spent five years advocating for children’s rights in some of the world’s toughest conflict zones before burnout pushed her to walk away and rebuild her life through painting. On August 27, she opens Further Away, Closer Within, her first solo exhibition, at Craft Studios in Ixelles — a homecoming show that brings together the travel-inspired paintings she made during a year spent crossing Asia and the Americas. It’s a story about identity, change and creativity that speaks directly to anyone who’s ever had to unlearn who they thought they were supposed to be, queer or otherwise.

A career built on protecting children in crisis

Before she was Made by Baya, Barbara Kralovicova worked in Brussels’ humanitarian sector, advocating for children’s rights and protection in some of the hardest contexts imaginable: Afghanistan, Palestine, Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, and a deployment to the Democratic Republic of Congo. It’s the kind of work that demands everything, and after several intense years, it caught up with her. She experienced burnout and made the difficult decision to step away from the career she had built.

Rather than staying in Brussels to recover in place, she left the city entirely for a year, travelling through Central and Southeast Asia, and South and Central America.

Painting as a way back to herself

What began as a personal outlet during that year on the road became something much bigger. “I began painting much more seriously,” she explains. What started as a way to process her experience grew into Made by Baya, a project shaped by the places she travelled, the people she met, and everything that marked her along the way. She started sharing the work online, and within roughly six months had built a community of 14,000 people around her art.

That period away also opened space to reconsider parts of her identity beyond her career. “As a bisexual person, creating a life that feels genuinely my own has been part of that broader process of understanding myself, moving away from expectations I had placed on myself, and finding more freedom in how I live and create,” she says. It’s a reminder that reinvention rarely happens on just one front — leaving a career and understanding yourself more fully can be part of the very same journey.

Bringing the journey home to Brussels

Further Away, Closer Within gathers the colourful, travel-inspired paintings Kralovicova created during her year abroad. But as much as the work is rooted in the places she visited, the exhibition is really about the internal journey underneath: stepping away from a career and an identity she had built, rediscovering creativity, and building something entirely her own.

Showing that work in Brussels carries particular weight. This is the city where she spent five years building her previous life, and where she’s now opening a completely different chapter — as a full-time artist rather than a humanitarian worker, on her own terms.

Why this story matters beyond the paintings

Queer identity doesn’t always announce itself through a single coming-out moment; sometimes it surfaces gradually, tangled up with bigger questions about career, burnout, purpose and where to actually live. Kralovicova’s path — from frontline advocacy work, through burnout, travel and self-discovery, to a solo show back in the city she calls home — is a portrait of what it can look like to rebuild a life more honestly, bisexuality included, without treating any one part of that story as separate from the rest.

Practical information

Further Away, Closer Within by Made by Baya (Barbara Kralovicova)
Vernissage: Thursday, August 27, from 6pm
Venue: Craft Studios, Rue du Viaduc 66, 1050 Ixelles, Brussels

The exhibition can be followed via @madebybaya on Instagram.

From conflict zones to canvases, Barbara Kralovicova’s journey is a reminder that finding your way closer to yourself sometimes takes going further away first.