A Kolkata Durga idol made from around 13,000 pens and an equal number of refills produced from recycled plastic is being displayed at Tridhara Sammilani near Rashbehari Avenue during this year’s Durga Puja. The installation demonstrates how a temporary cultural display can use everyday materials while keeping them within a recycling loop after the festival.
The 5.5-foot-tall installation measures 4.5 feet in width and extends 3 feet in depth. It has been placed alongside the community club’s main Durga idol at the puja pandal. Unlike the principal idol, which will be immersed after the festival, the pen installation is scheduled to be dismantled so that the materials can be recycled and used in the manufacture of new pens.
The project was conceived and created by artist Chandra Nath Saha, popularly known as Tilak. Speaking to The Statesman, Saha said the idea came from transforming a familiar and functional object into an artistic representation of Maa Durga. He said the project explored how thousands of individual objects could be assembled into a form carrying cultural and emotional significance.
The work took more than 20 days to complete and involved planning, preparation and execution across several stages. The team had to determine how the pens could be assembled while maintaining the idol’s proportions, structure and visual character. The face was one of the most demanding parts of the project because its finer details had to preserve Maa Durga’s expression while being created from an unconventional material.
Saha said there were moments of uncertainty during the initial stages, when the team was still working out how the pens would come together as a cohesive sculptural form. As the structure developed and the image of Maa Durga began to emerge, the material became capable of producing the distinctive form the team had intended.
The Tridhara Sammilani team supported the creative direction and allowed Saha and his team to experiment with the concept at the scale they had envisioned. That institutional support enabled the installation to be developed as a separate artistic work rather than being incorporated into the main idol.
The installation also differs from many temporary festival objects in its planned afterlife. Its components are not intended to be immersed with the main idol or discarded after the event. Instead, the pens and refills will be dismantled and directed towards recycling and subsequent use in making new pens. The arrangement links the visual language of Durga Puja with a material-reuse process that continues beyond the festival display.
