Carlos Quinto Kemm’s Don’t Give Up is a blistering visual commentary—dense, visceral, and unapologetically political. It unfolds like a theatrical reckoning, dragging viewers into a surreal landscape where iconography, grotesquerie, and symbolism collide with urgent force. Kemm’s mastery of dimensional collage creates a scene so richly layered that each element must be peeled back with care—each absurdity a cipher, each monstrosity a mirror.

Dominating the foreground is a beastly hybrid figure—a nightmarish chimera whose form is a direct indictment of corrupt power. Its body is that of a hyena, symbol of opportunism and moral decay, while its neck—a coral snake—connotes venomous rhetoric cloaked in seductive pattern. A scorpion’s tail curves ominously upward, threatening violence from behind. On the creature’s hindquarters sits a small crown, absurd in placement, yet devastating in implication: sovereignty anchored in the basest part of the beast. It stands atop a pile of gold bars—capital literally beneath its feet—while its unnaturally long, red necktie, a visual trademark of arrogance and excess, trails into carnival wheels that pull the creature forward. Here, spectacle is not just part of the machinery; it is the means of propulsion.

To the right, a Tesla car is battered by relentless ocean waves—sleek, silvery, and now adrift like a relic of unfulfilled techno-utopia. Its inclusion is pointed: the empty promises of progress, luxury, and innovation now flounder in a rising tide of environmental and societal ruin. It is not merely detritus—it is a monument to failed salvation, overwhelmed by the very forces it once claimed to master.

In the smoky distance, partially obscured by fire and ash, the Statue of Liberty appears shattered and aflame—reduced to little more than a silhouette and smoldering ruins. Her torch, once a beacon of hope and welcome, is barely visible through the haze. Quinto Kemm explains, “I didn’t want to show Liberty as fallen in some sudden, cinematic collapse. To me, she’s been eroded—slowly, relentlessly—consumed by the chaos that now engulfs the national mythos. It’s not a grand extinguishing. It’s a quiet unraveling. Liberty, weathered by neglect and contradiction, just burning away in the background.”

Presiding above this maelstrom, a serene yet unsettling figure sits cross-legged—a yogi, not in ecstatic transcendence, but in solemn witness. He rests atop a folded American flag, the ritual banner of a fallen soldier. This choice is deliberate and piercing—a symbol of honor transformed into a meditation mat, fusing sacrifice with spiritual inertia. Surrounding his head spirals a radiant nimbus, constructed not of celestial light, but of U.S. government symbols: eagles, seals, scales, domes. This is a halo of bureaucracy, a sanctification of institutional power, both revered and damned.

Quinto Kemm reflects on the work’s central message: “Hovering in the sky, Don’t Give Up arcs across a smoky expanse—those words circle the number ‘3,’ fractured and incomplete, surrounded by symbols that suggest both continuity and collapse. It’s meant to float somewhere between earnest encouragement and bitter irony. It’s a spiritual slogan trying to survive the noise of a collapsing narrative.”

On the broader meaning behind the piece, Kemm offers, “There are no heroes in Don’t Give Up—only relics, hybrids, and echoes of a system unraveling. I wanted the viewer to feel the churn of the sea, the smolder of the sky, and yet still witness the parade rolling forward, pulled by its own grotesque invention. It’s not a satire—it’s a mirror.”