Theresia Massawe is a painter based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She focuses exclusively on portraits of women, using a consistent visual language that centers on emotional connection. The half-closed, unfocused eyes of her subjects serve as a recurring expressive motif.

Guinea fowls, fish, and chickens—commonly seen in Dar es Salaam and symbolically meaningful to the artist—also appear throughout her work, grounding her paintings in contemporary, everyday life.

The faces Massawe paints recall Tanzanian masking traditions, the most well-known being the Makonde. Unlike artists such as Pablo Picasso, who used the mask to challenge conventions of form, Massawe draws from this tradition to express Tanzanian perspectives on local art histories, infusing cultural forms with emotion and renewed vitality.