Graduate Student Abdulrahman Hamdi Featured in Chicago Reader

School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) MFA candidate Abdulrahman Hamdi is featured in the Chicago Reader for his thesis exhibition, Untold Stories, which was on view as part of the Grad One Show at SAIC Galleries. The profile traces Hamdi’s journey from practicing law in Saudi Arabia to becoming the first Saudi Arabian student in SAIC’s MFA Painting and Drawing program. In works such as I Didn’t Leave When I Did, Hamdi buries the words "I" and "you" beneath thick layers of paint to capture the elusive tension between what is expressed and the emotions that lie beyond words. Using color as a perceptual tool, he utilizes gold to represent the soul and explores self-realization through large-scale canvases—some standing seven feet tall—featuring dense, layered surfaces. Hamdi’s work seeks to make the unspeakable palpable, transforming a lifetime of silence into a vibrant, abstract visual language.