DARCH
DARCH: Umulkhayr Mohamed and Radha Patel
DARCH is a disabled Welsh collective formed by Umulkhayr Mohamed and Radha Patel. Their practice is grounded in care-centred approaches, and a politics of solidarity, liberation, and ancestral honouring. Together, they explore rituals, shrine building, animism and relationships to land through sound work, conversations, storytelling, performance and sculpture. In 2025 DARCH presented work at Liverpool Biennale, and in 2026 they will be showing work at Mission Gallery, g39, MOSTYN and Ty Pawb.
Umulkhayr Mohamed is a Welsh Somali artist, writer, curator, and educator working under the alias Aisha Ajnabi. Their sound, installation and performance practice explores emancipatory temporalities, animist and ancestral spirituality, and a politics of solidarity and liberation. They seek to dissolve the boundaries between beings and reveal a shared wholeness.
Radha Patel is a storyteller whose work reflects on colonialism, nature, religion, rituals, language, folklore and speculative futures. Approaching folklore as resistance, Radha creates new rituals and objects that seek ancestral guidance to subvert systems of capitalism, racism and war, and build new systems centred on compassion and kinship.
DARCH: Umulkhayr Mohamed a Radha Patel
DARCH is a disabled Welsh collective formed by Umulkhayr Mohamed and Radha Patel. Their practice is grounded in care-centred approaches, and a politics of solidarity, liberation, and ancestral honouring. Together, they explore rituals, shrine building, animism and relationships to land through sound work, conversations, storytelling, performance and sculpture. In 2025 DARCH presented work at Liverpool Biennale, and in 2026 they will be showing work at Mission Gallery, g39, MOSTYN and Ty Pawb.
Artist, sgwennwr, curadur ac addysgwr Somali Cymreig yw Umulkhayr Mohamed, sy’n gweithio o dan yr arallenw Aisha Ajnabi. Mae eu gwaith sain, gosod, a pherfformio yn archwilio amser rhyddfreiniol, ysbrydoldeb animistaidd a hynafiadol, a gwleidyddiaeth undod a rhyddhau. Maen nhw’n ceisio ymdoddi’r ffiniau rhwng pethau byw a datguddio’r cyfander a rannwn.
Storïwr yw Radha Patel, sy’n creu gwaith yn myfyrio ar drefedigaethedd, natur, crefydd, defodau, iaith, straeon gwerin a dyfodolau damcaniaethol. Gan ddod at straeon gwerin fel dull o wrthsefyll, mae Radha’n creu defodau a gwrthrychaunewydd sy’n ceisio arweiniad cynfamol er mwyn tanseilio systemau cyfalafol, hiliol a rhyfelgar, gan adeiladu systemau newydd gyda thrugaredd a chyd-gariad wrth eu calon.