Whether it's one of her shag-pile and glue carpet bombs (footballs covered in carpet made to look like bombs) or a home-video of the artist dancing, face covered with an abbaya singing a Britney Spears hit into a hand-gun, there's no doubt her work takes its cues from some of the most sensitive issues of the day - freedom of speech, women in Islam, terrorism.
But, El-Sherbini insists, she is not a Muslim artist. "I'm just an artist who happens to be a Muslim. In fact she dislikes the definition so much that she initially declined an invitation to be involved in a recent UK project about Muslim identity in Britain - Re-inventing Muslim Vernacular.
But following relentless encouragement from the project organisers she capitulated and joined in with her book of jokes and comic drawings, Sheik'n'Vac. A collection of puns using Muslim words and icons, the book has been described as an exploration of the "tensions of religious and racial identities" and "a provocative satirisation of the representation of Muslims".
But, says El-Sherbini, there's nothing so grand in her work really, it's just that people like to see it that way. "My work isn't about anything. I don't want to fix meaning to it, it becomes dead and stale." Instead she likes allowing her audience to choose their own interpretation of a piece and enjoys hearing the meaning they take from her work.

If there is a glimmer of meaning to her work, she says, it is about creating a catalyst for debate, and always with humour. "Humour is always right at the essence of my work. It's such a good way of engaging people. I don't like work that's heavily political. My work isn't political and there aren't any issues, but jokes are totally integral."
So it is that her current show at the Caja Blanca in Palma (until April 29) includes a Blue Peter style 'how to' video for making carpet bombs and a giant photograph of a bowling skittle dressed in a head-scarf. There is also a joke written by El-Sherbini, spelled out on the wall in magnetic letters like the ones used to teach children how to spell. It goes: "A veiled woman was arrested under suspicion of a threat to national security. She claimed she was working under cover."

Not side-splitting stuff, but it does lend a gentle smile and a lightness of touch to an otherwise gloomy and depressingly sinister subject. And it's a formula that has also taken her to the stages of comedy clubs in the UK, performing her repertoire from Sheik 'n' Vac as a stand up routine to great acclaim. Not bad for a 27-year-old art student.
But is she making light of a truly serious subject? Does she worry that she is trivialising such politically sensitive issues in an equally sensitive cultural climate? Not a bit. "I'm not worried about trivialising anything at all. It's a way of getting people in to a conversation. I'm getting people to talk about it and bringing it back into dialogue." With her Britney Spears routine (entitled Hit Me), she says, she is simply "messing around with things that are very loaded and by bringing them back into dialogue. I'm saying 'What the hell!' Why can't people dance around and sing into a gun?"

Clearly as a British artist (she is half Egyptian and half Trinidadian but was brought up in less glamorous Pontefract near Leeds), there's a risk that the humour in her work will be lost on Mallorcan audiences. Anticipating this, she has re-penned her veiled woman joke in Spanish, incorporating local references and ensured that the irony in the Blue Peter style carpet bomb video would not be lost by checking there is an equivalent programme on Spanish children's TV.
But it would be wrong to see her work as just a series of jokes and there is something to stimulate the eye as well as the mind. The 20 or so carpet bombs (on sale for around 200 € each, depending on size) are something of a kitsch novelty and the large print of a single bomb (1,500 €) has a serene beauty about it. (As wiley gallery owner Eva points out, a maverick investor could do worse than buy up Yara El-Sherbini's catalogue now).

Whether El-Sherbini's work is funny or not, or whether the viewer finds meaning in what she does is, at the end of the day, entirely subjective. But whether she likes it or not, and whether she intends it to surface, there's a darkly serious undertone to her work and the issues it flirts with. And that's no joke.

Yara El-Sherbini's first solo exhibition can be viewed at La Caja Blanca, Calle Verí 9, Palma, until April 29. Visit www.lacajablanca.com for further information.