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Kaung’s one-woman show, ‘‘Mostly Burmese Mugs,” opened last week in the Space 7:10 gallery, located at Kefa Café in Silver Spring. The show features iconic portraits of mostly fictional Burmese characters and ceramic mugs. Kaung’s inspiration comes from decades of scholarship on Burma (officially called the Union of Myanmar by the country’s military authorities) and a human rights-oriented view of Burmese history.

Colleagues say that her work, informed by a non-artistic background that straddles two continents, has unique potential to raise awareness of Burmese human rights.

‘‘I can’t think of people who come to art as a dissident like she has,” said activist artist Tom Block of Silver Spring. ‘‘When you operate in the art world, you reach a whole different audience.”

Kaung has lived in the United States for 25 years now, but her attachment to her home country shows in her portraits on display this month. Most of them draw from photographs of Burmese friends, relatives and historical figures.

At Kaung’s Bethesda studio, dozens of paintings adorn the walls, easels, shelves and even the floor. She has experimented with oils and acrylics, photographs and ceramics. There are ‘‘memory rolls” — poster-mailing tubes covered in Burmese food labels and fabrics — hanging from the same shelves that hold her plethora of Buddha statues.

‘‘I miss Burma, so I like to have around me these strong figures,” she said, surrounded by the portraits she began painting two years ago.

Kaung is a Burmese scholar who became an activist incidentally, as a researcher for the Burma Fund, a think tank linked with the Burmese government in exile headquartered in Rockville. After leaving her job as a researcher for Radio Free Asia, she also took up art as something more than a passing hobby.

Kaung publishes articles in foreign policy and literary publications alike. She is an economic consultant and sits on university human rights panels. She specializes in all things Burmese. But she has not seen her home country since 1982.

Kaung was born in Rangoon, Burma, in the 1940s. She grew up in the suburbs of London, only returning to Burma by steam ship in 1950.

A coup d’etat in 1962 yielded a military regime that lasted through the 1980s, and during this time, Kaung earned degrees in political economy. She studied and worked as a professor inside what she said was a closely monitored Burmese university system. She married and gave birth to two sons, but longed for education in a country where she envisioned a freer exchange of ideas.

Kaung learned she had received a scholarship to come to the United States in 1982. Information was so controlled in Burma that Kaung’s funding source was secret.

‘‘I didn’t even know it was a Fulbright [grant] until I was on the tarmac,” waiting to board an airplane to the United States, she said.

She spent the next several years working toward a doctorate in city and regional planning and political science from the University of Pennsylvania.

But after an uprising in 1988 led to martial law in Burma, Kaung lost her Fulbright funding. She was stranded in the United States, and although the university hired immigration lawyers for her, she suffered the effects of political turmoil. She was not able to return to Rangoon. She was required to sign agreements not to participate in political activity in the United States. At one point, she was accused by her home country’s military attaché of seditious writings ‘‘to help the American government.”

Since then, Kaung has worked as a consultant, radio newsperson and think tank researcher for the Burmese government in exile. She has established herself as an authority within the 3,000-person Burmese refugee community in the D.C. metro area.

She draws on these roots to create artwork her colleagues said is unlike any other.

‘‘We have a lot of literature and poems in Burmese, but it is very different to introduce to Western countries because we don’t have very many translators,” said Khin May Zaw, senior editor for Radio Free Asia’s Burmese service. Zaw said few Burma activists are fluent in both English and Burmese, connected to the country, and rarely artists. An effective Burmese advocate communicating through art ‘‘needs to represent Burma and [translate Burmese art] to the Western media, and I think [Kaung] is the one.”

Block, who has previously curated Kaung’s work at the Kefa Café, said she has ‘‘certain credentials and gravitas” that distinguish her from other artists.

‘‘She’s not just an artist,” he said. ‘‘At an exhibit, you’re going to find [her writings], and you’re going to find her talking about her personal experience.”

If you go

Mostly Burmese Mugs, an exhibit of portraits and painted ceramics by artist and Burmese activist Kyi May Kaung on display through April 7 at Space 7:10 at Kefa Café, 963 Bonifant St., Silver Spring. Call 301-589-9337.

Upcoming

Trunk Show: Wearable Art Jackets, a fashion show of clothing designed and handmade by Kyi May Kaung 6:30-8:30 p.m. March 30 at Space 7:10 at Kefa Café.