Biography

Sonny Oram (b. 1988) is a Boston-based multidisciplinary artist and violist who doesn’t limit himself to a single medium. He begins with an emotion or idea he wants to express and then selects the medium accordingly. His work has spanned visual art, poems, memoirs, graphic design, music, performance, comedy, fashion, and more. Autistic and with mirror-touch synesthesia—a neurological condition in which he physically experiences the emotions of others—Sonny channels this often painful way of experiencing the world into his art. His work often challenges social norms through a transgender, Jewish, and neurodivergent lens.

Sonny grew up in Arlington, Massachusetts, with parents who deeply valued the arts. His parents kept an art table stocked with supplies, where he spent countless hours drawing. His earliest published work was created at age ten: a series of collages made from cut-up magazines, accompanied by original text exploring themes of gender, cultural conditioning, predatory advertising, and media objectification. In 2025, images of these collages were published in Queer and Trans Fashion Brands: Resistance and Revolution (Bloomsbury Press) and the Fashion, Style & Popular Culture journal. He sold his first painting at age fourteen for $35 (about $63 today).

Sonny began playing viola at age eight and, at fourteen, became the youngest student accepted by renowned viola pedagogue Carol Rodland before earning a merit scholarship at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Sonny was a finalist in the 2007 American String Teachers Association National Solo Competition, and made a solo debut with the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra at age twenty. His musical studies continue to influence the rhythm, gesture, and improvisational quality of his visual art.

In 2011, Sonny founded Qwear, an internationally recognized queer fashion publication featured in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, HuffPost, BuzzFeed, and DesignSponge. He later spoke on SXSW's first official queer fashion panel and launched campaigns including #ThisIsWhatAsexualLooksLike with activist Yasmin Benoit.

Sonny has performed poetry at GBH’s Outspoken Saturdays series and at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. His poster designs and visual identity work for the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning were exhibited in a solo show at the MIT Rotch Library in the summer of 2018. In 2021, he redesigned the logo for the MIT Edgerton Center, which has since appeared on the Nasdaq MarketSite billboard in Times Square.

Sonny’s mirror-touch synesthesia deepens in the presence of live music. Recently, Sonny began collaborating with musicians on live mural performances for a project called “What if you could see music?” He launched this project with the Arpeggione Ensemble in April 2026 when he joined them on stage and improvised large-scale abstract murals in response to the music. Each mural becomes a physical record of an emotional experience shared between performer, audience, and artist.