Intersecting Pentagons by Adiba K. Anam

Intersecting Pentagons Description and Oil on Canvas

During my Psychiatry clerkship, I administered the Mini-Mental Status Exam to my patients to assess and trend changes in cognitive functioning. The MMSE includes a portion called the Pentagon Drawing Test where patients are asked to copy two intersecting pentagons. Some patients produced perfect replicas while the more cognitively impaired produced stand-alone pentagons, quadrangles or simply disjointed lines. I found this variability to be incredibly visually striking and sought to display it on canvas, in order of increasing impairment.