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South African artist in Guinness Book of World Records for largest coffee mosaic

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A South African artist has his name in the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest coffee mosaic ever created. Percy Maimela is not a conventional artist. He uses salt to create messengering art pieces.


“Salt is a motivation in a sense that I’m using something that has been in every household forever. I’m giving it a second purpose. So in a sense, I’m trying to create an idea that like we shouldn’t limit ourselves to the traditional methods of doing things,” said Maimela.

Maimela’s distinctive work caught the attention of Brainfarm, which was looking for a unique event promotion.

“They proposed the idea of doing the artist Black Coffee, with coffee. Well, initially I didn’t like the idea because it was I felt like they were redirecting me. But because I love challenges I was like okay, cool. Let’s do it. And then I pitched to them the idea of me setting a new record for Guinness World Record,” said Maimela.

It took four hours and a few bags of coffee ground to complete the aromatic look-a-like of the world renowned South African DJ and enter the Guinness book.

“We set the new Guinness World record for the largest coffee ground art. The final result is about 25.9 square meters. I had a chance to go upstairs and look at the artwork. So it was like, oh, this is amazing yay! I was excited,” said Maimela.

But Maimela’s first love remains salt, and he hopes to one day take his talent to the world.

“So I still feel like Guinness World Record is page one of like, my notebook. One of my goals is to do my artwork on a very huge space, a huge platform where people will see it live. The other one is just to travel and maybe busk around, hide my face, just throw around material and then leave and then say, Percy was here!” said Maimela.

Maimela said, however, leaving a legacy for his son and the next generation is his ultimate goal.

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