Biography

Sonny Oram (b. 1988) is a Boston-based multidisciplinary artist whose work spans visual art, writing, graphic design, music, performance, and fashion. He has mirror-touch synesthesia, a neurological condition in which he physically experiences the emotions of others, which deeply shapes his relationship to each medium. His work often challenges social norms from a transgender, Jewish, neurodivergent lens.

His earliest work to receive publication was created at age 10 — collages made from cut-up magazines and accompanied by original text exploring themes of gender, cultural conditioning, predatory advertising, and media objectification. In 2025, images of these collages were published in both Queer and Trans Fashion Brands: Resistance and Revolution (Bloomsbury Press) and the Fashion, Style & Popular Culture journal.

Sonny began playing viola at age eight and, at fourteen, became the youngest student accepted by renowned viola pedagogue Carol Rodland before being recruited to 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.

In 2013, Sonny founded Qwear, an internationally recognized queer fashion publication featured in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, HuffPost, BuzzFeed, and DesignSponge*, and in 2016 he spoke at South by Southwest as part of the festival’s first official queer fashion panel. Through Qwear, he launched landmark 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. The result is a visual translation of sound: each mark, color, and gesture shaped by what he hears and feels in the room.