Jared Owens is an multidisciplinary artist whose practice focuses on bringing awareness to the plight of nearly 2.5 million people enmeshed in the American carceral state. He is self taught during more than 18 years of incarceration, working in painting, sculpture, and installation, using materials and references culled from penal matter.

In 2024 he was a Frieze impact prize finalist. In 2020 he received a Right of Return Fellowship from SOZE Agency, and in 2019 a Restorative Justice grant from Philadelphia Mural Arts to create a mural with teenagers under court supervision; in 2016-17 he was the recipient of a grant from the Eastern State Penitentiary to produce “Sepulture,” a large-scale installation. He is an Art For Justice Grantee, and, a 2021-24 Senior Fellow at Silver Arts Projects.

He has presented a number of talks and workshops, including “Marking Time: Prison Arts and Activism” conference at Rutgers in New Brunswick, NJ, in 2014; “State Goods: Art in the Era of Mass Incarceration (with an installation) at Andrew Feldman House in the Bronx (2017); and at “Prison Art and Prison Reform” at Eastern State Penitentiary (2017). He has run numerous workshops including being the program designer and lead instructor for the one-week intensive “The Artist’s Eye” at the Lyric Theater in Lexington, KY. (2016), And actively participates in panel discussions, centered around mass incarceration and art.