Announcing the Tajsa Roma Cultural Heritage Prize 2025 Finalists
The European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) is honored to announce the finalists for the Tajsa Roma Cultural Heritage Prize 2025. The prestigious prize celebrates a Roma individual whose work elevates Roma cultural expression and reimagines heritage for future generations.
The selected finalists for the Tajsa Roma Cultural Heritage Prize 2025 are:
Coco Reyes
Noell Maggini
Riah Knight
Sead Kazanxhiu
Selma Selman
The jury was composed of: Timea Junghaus, Dijana Pavlović, Colin Clark, Avni Mustafa, Patricia Caro Maya.
The Tajsa Roma Cultural Heritage Prize Award Ceremony & Gala will take place on:
Saturday, November 29, 2025 — 7:00 PM
The Romanian Athenaeum – Street Benjamin Franklin 1-3, Bucharest
Attendance is by registration only.
Tajsa Roma Cultural Heritage Prize 2025 Finalists
Coco Reyes is a multifaceted artist from Granada, Spain, with a strong educational background including a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and a Diploma in Acting. A flamenco dancer from birth, her professional trajectory covers film, television (La Novia Gitana, Hospital Central), and theatre (The Soldier’s Tale). As a creator, her dedication to the Roma community and visual arts was highlighted when she participated in an Artistic Grant from ERIAC for visual poetry.
The main focus of her current work is the celebrated stage production, “Lisístrata Montoya,” which has successfully toured throughout Spain, appearing at venues like the International Classical Theatre Festival of Mérida winning important awards.This project, which drives her company “Gitanas a Escena,” is a community-based project with grassroots women and was honored with the “Mujer Meridiana 2025” Award for its exceptional work in social transformation, historical memory, and Roma women’s empowerment.
Born in Prato to a Sinti family, Noell Maggini graduated from the Loretta Oltremari fashion school and worked for leading fashion houses before founding his eponymous brand. Considered a prodigy of Italian haute couture in 2020, he built his stylistic identity around tailor-made couture pieces that embody craftsmanship and uniqueness. From the very beginning, the brand has embraced intersectionality as its core value, imagining a man and a woman freely exchanging clothes in front of their wardrobes.
An activist with the Kethane Roma and Sinti movement for Italy since 2019, Maggini is committed to giving voice to his community, expressing its emotions and memory through fashion. In 2025, he created a symbolic garment for a performance with Luna De Rosa at the Rom and Sinti Pavilion of the Triennale di Milano. Each creation reflects a rigorous savoir-faire intertwined with craftsmanship, inclusivity, and sustainability, core values of the brand, chosen by numerous Italian and international celebrities.
Riah Knight is a British-Romani artist based in Berlin whose artistic practice spans acting, music, writing, and dramaturgy.
Raised around the UK Romani activist movement, Knight developed a keen political awareness from a young age and found an early platform for both performance and advocacy. Her work has been featured in numerous documentaries, campaigns, and podcasts advocating for Romani and women’s* rights, and she continues to engage in activism through her art.
Knight’s practice places feminism and social justice at its core. Informed by her long-term work at the Maxim Gorki Theater, and as a member of the collective Glossy Pain, her theatre challenges hegemonic ways of knowing, using the stage as a space where lived experience, embodied memory, and collective storytelling can generate alternative perspectives. Knight has taught university workshops on composing music for theatre, focusing on music as a dramaturgical tool for exploring form and theme.
She made her theatre debut in the acclaimed theatre production Roma Armee (2017), directed by Yael Ronen. The piece, which she co-composed music for, was nominated for the DER FAUST award and featured in the European Theatre Prize. In 2025, she appeared as Micaela in Christian Weise’s Carmen at Gorki, where she also worked as a writer and dramaturg.
Her latest musical release, Wicked Laughter, explores the darker sides of femininity – interweaving R&B, folk, trip-hop, and performance poetry to create a sonic landscape for the political reimagining of female aggression and desire.
Knight has performed widely across Europe at major festivals and institutions, with several plays earning award nominations.
Sead Kazanxhiu is a multimedia visual artist who lives and works in Tirana, Albania. Through painting, installation, video, and performance, Kazanxhiu explores themes of belonging, identity, and the everyday experiences of Roma communities.
Kazanxhiu’s art has been presented in exhibitions and biennales across Europe. His recent exhibitions include Chronic Desire—Sete cronic at Triennale Milano (2025), part of Timișoara 2023 – European Capital of Culture, curated by Cosmina Goagea, Corina Oprea, and Brîndușa Tudor; One Day We Shall Celebrate Again at Documenta Fifteen, Kassel (2022); and All That We Have in Common at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje as part of Manifesta 14 Biennale (2022).
Other notable projects include All the Birds Are Praying for Our Children (Manifesta 14 Pristina Parallel Event, 2022), Out of Sight (Galerie za Galerií, Czech Republic, 2022), WE ARE HERE! (2nd Roma Biennale, 2021), and KERES KULTURA! / WE CREATE CULTURE! (Central Slovak Gallery and Slovak National Gallery, 2019).
Beyond his artistic practice, Kazanxhiu is the founder of Parking Art Gallery, an independent space dedicated to nurturing emerging artists and fostering inclusive cultural dialogue.
Selma Selman is a visual and performance artist from Bosnia and Herzegovina of Romani origin. Her multidisciplinary practice includes performance, video, painting, and installation, often rooted in autobiographical narratives that confront social injustice, gender-based violence, and systemic discrimination.
Her works have been exhibited at documenta fifteen, the Venice Biennale, Autostrada Biennale, Manifesta 14, Gropius Bau, Stedelijk Museum, Schirn Kunsthalle, MoMA PS1, Istanbul Biennial. Selman is also the founder of the foundation Get the Heck to School, which supports Roma girls facing poverty and marginalisation.
The 2025 Tajsa Cultural Heritage Prize Ceremony is co-financed by the Federal Foreign Office and the European Commission within the framework of the ERIACNET4EU project, alongside ERIAC.
