Jen Everett was born in 1981 in Detroit, Michigan. She received her Bachelor of Architecture from Tuskegee University in 2004 and her Master of Fine Arts in Visual Art from Washington University in Saint Louis in 2019. Everett is interested in the myriad of ways Black people continue to produce and transmit knowledge in excess of formal structures. Her practice moves between lens and time-based media, installation, and writing.

Everett has exhibited nationally and internationally at the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis, St. Louis, MO; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA; Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, IL; ACRE Projects, Chicago, IL; University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN; Hampshire College, Amherst, MA;  Seattle University, Seattle, WA; Flux Factory, Queens, NY; SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York, NY; Kunsthall Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway; and more. Her work is in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago, Chicago, IL.

Everett has presented her work at lectures and workshops at Stanford University, Stanford, CA; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL; Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO; St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. She has been an artist in residence at Fire Island Artist Residency, ACRE, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Vermont Studio Center and was a 2021-22 Duke University DocX Archive Lab Fellow. Everett currently lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri.