Durga Puja these days is the time for outlandish experiments not only with the image of the goddess and her brood but also with the materials the family is made of — ranging from sandesh to matchboxes. Narayan Sinha in his exhibition, Durga, at The Harrington Street Arts Centre (till Oct 15), however, is content with giving tradition a twist, with striking effect. He creates large images of the mother goddess in the traditional style, with only this difference — for his raw material, he uses various parts of automobiles.

Sinha is a young science graduate and an autodidact, and the manner in which he has conceived the pure form of the goddess shorn of all encumbrances and ornamentation is nothing short of brilliant. In each piece, the armature is almost bare, and the goddess is literally dressed to kill — even the ornaments she wears are different in every piece and made with the spare parts of vehicles as well as with the utensils used in a puja room such as brass lamps and kajallata (kohl pot). Most of the time, it is impossible to figure out the individual parts or the utensils, but once you have recognized them, you cannot help wondering about the artist’s awesome inventiveness.

To stress the traditional inspiration, Sinha has used various discarded pieces from old buildings such as verandahs with cast iron frames of intricate design and doors, but radically changed their use so that they become part of the ensemble. Sinha depends on the moulds created by clay artisans to give shape to the goddess’s visage with large eyes. Although the form divine is basically the same in each piece, he introduces subtle variations through the colours of the goddess’s attire, weapons, garlands and other jewellery — of shades ranging from steel grey to bright ochre and orange with a hint of verdigris.

The result is intensely dramatic, and Sinha often heightens it by smearing the forehead of the goddess with hibiscus-red sindoor. Sinha introduces in some of the pieces the poor children and child workers who hang around the pandals during the Pujas, when they perhaps get a day or two off from hard labour. These urchins are almost faceless, like the battered human beings Somenath Hore used to mould, first with beeswax. In a touching piece, a child wears a discarded crown when the goddess has left for her annual journey after the bisarjan or immersion (picture). Sinha hammered these figures out of the metallic bodies of vehicles.

Sinha has also produced a large chandelier with a cartwheel and lotus blooms with kerosene stoves. This is recycling at its innovative best. Sinha’s photographs are not that good but his imagination flowered when he created the Durgas.