Next to the cannon stands a four-foot bust, a red figure with a mask on and her hands held over her ears. We’re introduced to Angelus Novus the angel who looks into the past but is dragged into the future by the winds of progress. Though the angle is referenced from Benjamin’s text it is made contemporary since she resembles media images of a survivor of the London bombings of 2005.

The entire gallery is dotted with hand-picked images of war, from the Abu Gharib prison to the conflict between Iran and Palestine, presented through his paintings and sculptures in a calm and factual manner, almost like a documentary that is striking yet disconcerting.

Kolkata-born Soi is maniacally giving the exhibition last minute touch-ups. Now he takes time-out to sip a cappuccino and tell us about his journeys and his first solo Juggernaut. “It all began with the image of the woman holding a mask over her face after the London bombings. As I started drawing images from press clippings while dipping into history, this body of work emerged over two years,” says the 36-year-old Soi, who attended the University of California, San Diego and Amsterdam’s Rijks Academy, after graduating from M S University in Baroda.

“When I was studying in California I got involved with leftist thinking and ideology. I began working with documentary filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin and he introduced me to film and conceptual art,” recollects Soi, whose mural painting stint in Rotterdam also has a role to play in his artistic oeuvre.

It was inevitable that this political ideology would lead him to look at the issues surrounding globalisation, democracy and terrorism, which is largely what Juggernaut talks about. “If we go back in history, we see that when Napoleon tried to force his idea of democracy on people in Spain, it resulted in violent resistance. Something similar is going on now with Iraq, we are distracted by the garb of progress that is globalisation. One does not want to get involved in this dialogue since we are lulled into complacency that comes from having creature comforts,” observes Soi.