JARED OWENS

Jared Owens (b.1968) is a multidisciplinary artist, whose work addresses the violence and discrimination in the system of American mass incarceration. During a collective 18 years in federal prison, Owens developed his artistic practice by engaging with the materials he had access to including art books and newspapers, and collaborating with other inmates studying art. Beginning with portrait drawing, he later amassed a larger output through a variety of techniques, including figurative and abstract painting, sculpture and installation. Much like the harsh realities referenced in the work, in his choice to use penal objects such as prison bed sheets, Owens materially challenges the societal narrative that discarded or rejected 'things' cannot be worthy. Owens brings to our collective attention the struggles and the truths of the nearly 2.5 million people under the control of the American prison system, calling awareness to the legality and integrity of the entire ecosystem at large. 

Owens' recent institutional exhibitions include "Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration" at the MoMA PS1 in New York (2021); and "Rendering Justice" at the African American Museum of Art in Philadelphia (2021). In 2020, he received a Right of Return Fellowship from SOZE Agency and in 2019, he received a Restorative Justice grant from Philadelphia Mural Arts to create a mural with teenagers under court supervision. Owens currently lives and works in New York, participating in the Silver Art Projects residency program. 

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