The art gallery of San Jacinto College South Campus hosted a reception March 23 to kick off Quantum Soup, an interactive exhibition showcasing artist JooYoung Choi’s paintings, video art, music, puppetry, and animation.

At the gathering, Choi spoke to visitors about the reason Quantum Soup came together. She said her work was partly inspired by watching shows like Sesame Street as a child and realizing she never saw an Asian female character that resembled herself. In turn, she created videos with characters who she said, “are making up for all the people I didn’t see on television growing up.”

The exhibition invites visitors, or “earthlings,’ to help create “Quantum eats” and “BBFMs (Brain-Based Flora Manifestations),” from felt, straws, construction paper, stickers, and googly eyes, to take back to the fictional world she calls “The Cosmic Womb.”

Choi said she hopes the exhibition invites visitors to explore “the special parts of your imagination,” noting that adults tend to forget the creativity they once had as children.

San Jac student and art gallery intern Ruth Maldonado said her favorite part of the exhibit was contributing to Choi’s artwork.

“I love being able to have fun and be creative, and this show just put me in the zone,” Ruth said.

Early on, Choi had no interest in art but after noticing many of her friends attended art school, she decided to give it a chance. In college, she took a drawing course that she said changed her life. Moreover, she realized how happy her teacher was while drawing and she began to crave that same happiness.

Choi received a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Later, she attended Lesley University where she started to explore the idea of building a fictional world around her paintings. The paintings eventually evolved into video art where she used puppets to star in her videos.

Meanwhile, Choi said Quantum Soup is a celebration of infinite possibilities and a time to think creatively about “ice cream with eyeballs or have the idea that flowers could have feelings.” She proclaimed everyone needs Quantum Soup in his or her life.

“We use to get there as children,” she said, “and if we don’t get back to that, we are not fully accessing all the parts of our brain that we have been elegantly designed with, which is to have a pure sense of imagination.”

Quantum Soup will remain on display until April 8 in Room S15.112 of the Flickinger Fine Arts Center on the South campus.