Ulungile Magubane performing eMBIZENI, Still We Rise © York Mediale
Ulungile Magubane — York Mediale

Ulungile Magubane

Ulungile Magubane is an interdisciplinary performance artist, South African-New Yorker, rotten Johannesburger, neo-blues singer and songwriter, quasi-economist, cake maker, pseudo philosopher and [un]traditional healer in search of peace of mind.

She was born in Johannesburg and later moved to New York City where she spent her formative and college years. Currently, her work is informed by the idea that the human life is a series of the economic choices we make as participants in a global hyper capitalist economy. Those choices are informed by personal and societal identities. Her work is also reflective of the vulnerability that comes with living.

She combines her academic inclination for critical analysis with genre-bending music that she writes and composes herself. Ulungile oscillates between herself and her alter-ego, KOEK SISTA.

KOEK SISTA is the spiritual and musical performance of Ulungile’s physical and metaphysical experiences. Both these beings embody a frivolous, loving, hopeful, helpless, fun-loving, adrenaline-seeking, validation-yearning, indifferent human soul and mother.

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