Albanian mosaic artist working in Portugal to set ninth Guinness record

TIRANA, Sept. 23 – Only two months after setting his eighth Guinness World Record for the largest mosaic using industrial materials, Albanian artist Saimir Strati has embarked on a new mosaic adventure, this time in Portugal where he was recently featured in an exhibition.
Strati is working on a giant mosaic dedicated to Jose Saramago, the Portuguese 1998 Nobel Prize winner for Literature, using hundreds of thousands of corks.
“My attention is focused on setting the ninth Guinness World Record, this time in Portugal,” Strati was quoted as saying by local media.
Strati is creating the mosaic in Portugal’s Ponte de Sor town using 300,000 corks to create a 108 m2 mosaic which is 24 metres long and 4.5 metres high.
“The mosaic is part of an artist-in-residence. This is not the first time I have participated in the Ponte de Dor, where I have featured previous exhibitions,” he was quoted as saying.
Strati’s mosaic in Portugal comes after his first exhibition in the Iberian Peninsula last March.
Last July, Strati set his eighth Guinness World Record for the largest mosaic using industrial materials, this time for a 30m2 straw mosaic created in his hometown of Fier, south-western Albania.
Strati used around 150,000 straws to create his “Forbidden Fruit” mosaic which he named “Adam’s Apple” because of the folk tale that the bulge was caused by the forbidden fruit sticking in the throat of Adam. A Guinness World Records representative arrived in Fier to certify Starti’s mosaic on which he worked 16 hours a days for three weeks.
The artists says his love for mosaics started at a young age when he visited the ancient archaeological park of Apollonia, the second largest in Albania, fascinated by its 3,500 year-old mosaics.
“Using industrial easily available materials is one of the Guinness conditions. Today, we are witnesses of art being industrialized, but I am doing the opposite creating art with industrial materials,” says Strati.
In 2012, Saimir Strati set his seventh Guinness World Record for the largest mosaic using bean grains created in Kosovo’s capital, Prishtina.
Strati, who had already won seven Guinness World Records since 2006 for other mosaic artworks, created the mosaic in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Independence of Albania, putting together approximately 1,350,000 bean grains into a 65-square-meter artwork for which he was awarded his seventh Guinness World Record on November 26.
In late 2011, he set his sixth personal Guinness World Record for the world’s largest mosaic, using around a million coffee beans, depicting five musicians.
Strati’s Guinness journey started in September 2006 when he created the largest metal nail mosaic. The 8m2 (86.11 sq. feet) mosaic featured a portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci. Two years later, he entered the Guinness World Record for the largest cork mosaic is 91.87 mҠwith the theme ‘Mediterranea.’ In September 2009, he created the largest paint brush mosaic measuring 26 mҠdepicting pop star Michael Jackson.
In November 2010, Strati set a new world record when he made the largest screw artwork contained 235,500 metal screws in an artwork depicting the poet Homer on a banknote.
Born in Fier, Saimir Strati, 45, is an Albanian artist who is regarded as one of the world’s most renowned modern mosaic artists.
Saimir Strati is primarily an artist who works in mosaics. He has used materials including nails, toothpicks, corks, sea glass, eggshells, compact discs, coffee beans, porcelain and mirror glass among other materials. He is also a painter.