It is from this knowledge of both loss and enlightenment that Mater appears to have the ability to move from expressing sadness and anger to sharing his insights with a sense of humour and life giving lightness. In the work which has brought him fame in both Europe and Saudi Arabia, when it was acquired by The British Museum, he combined explicit notes from his medical education with images of the Kaaba and a mosque. In a tradition of making collages these notes were loosely distributed on and around a visually attractive blue and black X-Ray. While advertising science in this work Mater does not overestimate its meaning and serves his audience with the real question: is it just DNA that makes us human or is something more required? Mater is one of those artists who is not there for viewers alone but actually needs a listening audience. ‘Has eyes, so can see,’ is what he may write on his collectors' foreheads.

Celebrating the pleasure of your eyes, but punching you on your nose with milk cartons and cheese boxes of a yellow variety of La vache qui rit, is what Mater ambitiously did in the 2007 Sharjah Biennial. Mater does his homework and has given much thought to the yellow cow that is mentioned in the Quran as a pleasure to see. Yellow Cow Products was a non commercial shop apparently critical of ‘Western’ consumerism. Not afraid of some bravura, Mater, as if he was mocking a TV commercial, went off into the desert with a bucket of yellow paint and a sponge to paint a real cow yellow in a country where painting yellow cows real is considered not done.