VENICE.- For the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2026, Bugarin + Castle are to represent Scotland, curated by Mount Stuart Trust and commissioned by Scotland + Venice. The work will be shown from Saturday 9 May to Sunday 22 November 2026 at Olivolo, Castello 59/C 30122, Venice.
From Scottish castles to Filipino cemeteries, Bugarin + Castle explore overlapping geographies and time periods in a contemporary queer and trans reimagining of public shaming rituals. Bugarin + Castle narrative unfolds not in a single scene, but in a carnival-like procession of subversion and defiance. Working across architecture, moving image, sculpture, and performance, their practice draws vibrant connections between queer and trans lives in Scotland and internationally, including diasporic connections to the Philippines. Their work focuses on shared resonances as well as differences, shaped by personal and cultural histories. In selecting them, Scotland + Venice embraces a vision of Scotland that is outward-facing, interconnected, and attuned to the complexities of a shifting world, as well as supporting two artists to make their most significant body of work to date.
Across multiple artworks, the exhibition Shame Parade reimagines centuries-old European shaming rituals, known as rough music, charivari and scampanate, where spectacle, sound, and costume were used to discipline social transgressors. The artists transform these customs into a contemporary language, bringing together fourteenth-century court transcripts, satirical eighteenth-century engravings, karaoke ballads, medieval armour and Filipino vehicle art. Through this process, they construct a layered world where historic voices and contemporary culture loop together in scenes that are both defiant and tender. The sculpture, At Certayne Times fuses mechanical, anatomical, and vocal elements, while Submit to Sound, a moving image work, layers voice feminisation exercises and songs made with Manila-based band Kalye Teresa. Traversing both gallery spaces, the sculptural intervention, Nocturnal Amusements, poses the question, “Are You Discreet?” a knowing provocation to the viewer. Shame here is not banished, but stretched to new emotional registers where defiance, play, and intimacy coexist. Bugarin + Castle offer no moral resolution. By mapping shame and transformation across continents and through time, they create a politically charged space where power and identity remain in motion.
Mount Stuart Trust, based on the Isle of Bute, are curating the project, led by Dr Morven Gregor, working with the artists and a series of partners. They have presented a renowned Contemporary Visual Arts Programme since 2001 with artists including Alberta Whittle, Abbas Akhavan, Linder, Martin Boyce, Thomas Abercromby, and Ilana Halperin. Following Venice, the exhibition will return to Mount Stuart on Bute in Summer 2027, before touring to venues throughout Scotland with details to be announced. The UK tour has been supported by Art Fund. Forma, a contemporary arts organisation working across the UK and internationally, are Producers of the film element of the project and are working with Mount Stuart as Production Manager of the exhibition in Venice.
The project was chosen to represent Scotland by a panel including Sepake Angiama, Director, Iniva, Norah Campbell, Head of Arts Scotland, British Council, Simon Groom, Director, International & National Partnerships, National Galleries of Scotland, Emma Nicolson, Head of Visual Arts, Creative Scotland and Lucia Pietroiusti, Head of Research & Emergence at Hartwig Art Foundation, Amsterdam.
Bugarin + Castle’s recent interactive film Sore Throat, shot in Edinburgh and Manila, explored colonial monsters and sound in queer Filipino spaces, showing in a solo exhibition at Fruitmarket as well as at Tate Modern and international venues. Via custom software, gallery audience voices were unknowingly recorded and replayed within the film, implicating them as antagonists in its narrative. Bugarin + Castle also perform in drag as Hairy Teddy Bear and Pollyfilla, through Pollyanna, a Scottish queer arts company founded by Castle, now in its 10th year. The artists are based in Glasgow.
The work of the artists has been exhibited at leading UK institutions including Tate Modern, ICA: Institute of Contemporary Art, Fruitmarket and City Art Centre. Internationally, their work has been shown at WHYNoT Space (The Philippines), Microscope Gallery (USA), and Krittinen Gallery (Finland), Tromsø Centre for Contemporary Art (Norway), Photographic Centre Peri (Finland), and Cypher (Greece) and upcoming at Powerhouse Arts (USA). Individually, they have a wide international practice. Davide Bugarin’s work has been featured at the Malta Biennale (2024) and the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2025, working alongside La Rivoluzione delle Seppie. He has also participated in a residency at Venice Biennale of Architecture 2023, selected by the Biennale curator. He was part of the New Architecture Writers programme, contributing to The Architectural Review and The Architects’ Journal. He has received awards and scholarships from Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Worshipful Company of Architects and Burberry. Bugarin recently completed a research fellowship at The Warburg Institute, who have supported the initial research for this Scotland + Venice project. Angel Cohn Castle’s work has been commissioned by BBC Scotland, LUX Scotland and Talbot Rice Gallery, and exhibited at galleries including Kunstmuseum Bonn (Germany) and BALTIC (UK). As founder of Pollyanna, she has produced exhibitions at Royal Scottish Academy, Stirling Castle and international galleries including KINDL Centre for Contemporary Art (Germany). She is currently Lecturer in Fine Art at Newcastle University, and was previously Teaching Fellow in Fine Art at The University of Edinburgh.
Bugarin + Castle said, “For the uneasy and passionate, from an uneasy and passionate duo.
The unruly woman, the cuckold, the prostitute, the sodomiser, and other social transgressors were publicly mocked in historic shaming parades. We are interested in how both sound and cross-dressing were used not for expression but as tools of control. These raucous events are the genesis of our exhibition that traverses the historic and contemporary, Scotland and the Philippines. We make the work in a context today where the lives of those such as trans people and sex workers are being debated and impacted in courts and parliaments, often without those people being heard. The work does not tidy shame away, nor does it cling to it. Instead, we lean into the complexity, stickiness and collision of sound, voice and shame.”
Dr Morven Gregor, Curator, Mount Stuart Trust and Sophie Crichton Stuart, Chair of Mount Stuart Trust, who founded the Mount Stuart contemporary visual arts programme in 2001, said, “We are excited to curate the work of Bugarin + Castle for Scotland + Venice in 2026. Shame Parade will be the artists' most ambitious presentation to date, reflecting their global outlook and practices across performance, film, architecture, sculpture and design. Their skill in animating historical research to foreground contemporary questions exemplifies the approach of Mount Stuart's Contemporary Visual Arts Programme. As the Programme celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2026 by presenting Bugarin + Castle in Venice, we look forward to bringing Shame Parade to Bute in 2027."
