Uncle Iso

Kintsugi Kelley-Chung was born as Kian Kelley-Chung on May 14, 1997, in the suburban town of Columbia, MD. His father, a first generation Chinese-Jamaican freelance photographer, and mother, a half Black-half Japanese wellness center owner, raised him and his sister to be ambitious, driven, and independent.

Growing up in a creative and entrepreneurial household, a career in the arts felt more like nature than choice. Pairing his curiosity with his creativity, Kintsugi explored various mediums, spanning music, photography, film, poetry and prose. Unwilling to solely follow one artform, Sugi sought to create a platform that would allow him and other incredible creatives to pursue all of their artistic endeavors and shed the feeling of being boxed in.

Kintsugi founded RXNIN LIFE in his freshman dorm room at the University of Maryland, College Park. Throughout his artistic career, he battled with his identity, going by several artist aliases, where he eventually landed on the name Uncle Iso, inspired by the “uncle” trope of being the fun sage of wisdom and the connection ISO has to light and solitude.

His birth name, Kian, having two pronunciations (Key-in and Key-on) raised him with a defining identity crisis. Constantly feeling like he had to choose between two sides of himself in the context of familial, social and political pressures, he was forced to think critically about the concepts of identity and self-discovery. At the age of 25, after attending the NeXt Doc Film Fellowship retreat and a attending a workshop with Dr. Kameelah Rashad, he reimagined the power he had in naming himself beyond an artistic moniker and chose to change his name to Kintsugi, in honor of reclaiming his Japanese heritage and the word’s meaning as it regards to healing and identity through time.

Beyond breaking barriers in the creative world, Kintsugi also aims to break social barriers by joining his artistic craft with social justice and minority advocacy. As a firm believer in art’s power to change society, his work is largely based in anti-racist, feminist and queer theorist pedagogy with a goal of aiding in the fight for total liberation of all oppressed peoples.

Kintsugi’s main goal in life is to inspire others to make whatever reality they want, become what they have. Never limit yourself, and always strive for more. Be you and be great.

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