What makes someone who they are? This eternal question has an often complex answer which can be applied and is experienced at several levels. While we cannot control genetic predispositions or native intellect; we cannot exclude them from the question; however, what remains and is flexible are the interactions and relationships that from our earliest moments, assist in defining us. We must also bear in mind that as interactions and relationships are ever evolving; so then are we.
Viewed another way, our life events create many daily, defining choices and thus, a diversity within us that allows many concurrent paths to be operable at one time. The ones we choose, become our identity. Artists; perhaps moreso than the rest of us, are constantly re examining their lives and interpretations of events and at various points in their existence, seem to break the mold and set in motion new paths; thus making their personal statement; which may not have existed before that statement. The artist Marina Abramovic through her work Conjuction makes such a statement; reaching into the diversity of her development and her subsequent identity to make her personal mark on performance art.