by Alison Hugill // May 8, 2026
At this year’s Venice Biennale of Art, the collateral exhibition ‘Scotland + Venice: Bugarin + Castle,’ curated by Morven Gregor of Mount Stuart Trust, will present the artist duo’s new work, ‘Shame Parade.’ With this show, Bugarin + Castle offer a queer and trans reimagining of historical public shaming rituals—like rough music, charivari and scampanate—where spectacle, sound and costume were used to discipline social transgressors. Their multidisciplinary practice blends archival materials, music and visual culture—from medieval court records to karaoke and Filipino vehicle art. In the show, a subversive, carnival-like procession unfolds and rather than resolving shameful feelings, the artists transform them into a space of defiance, intimacy and play. We spoke to Bugarin + Castle about what they will be showing in Venice, the dramatization of shame and their interest in drag as a disruptive tool.
Bugarin + Castle // Photo by Silke Briel
Alison Hugill: What led you to the concept of the ‘Shame Parade’ for your contribution in Venice this year?
Bugarin + Castle: We were first inspired when we were doing sound mapping research in the Philippines, around noise pollution. As a Southeast Asian capital, Manila is a very large city. We found out that in one site, a cemetery in Manila, there is a huge discrepancy of sound: it’s super loud during the day and super silent at night. It’s one of the biggest cemeteries in the Philippines. There’s a specific sound restriction article in the penal code that mentions this concept called “charivari,” which is a European historical umbrella term that started in France and the UK, and includes public parades on streets or at people’s houses, meant to mock people who are unruly or anti-social or people who transgress gender stereotypes. We were interested in how costume and sound were used during these mockery parades in order to control gender stereotypes.
Specifically, we noticed that they often featured horseback performances, where there’d be a man dressed as a powerful, “athletic” or “domineering” woman and their “emasculated” husband. As artists who have worked in drag performance and consider it a liberatory practice, we were interested in looking at histories where cross-dressing has been used as a form of punishment or control. We liked the idea of shame as dramatization and this eagerness to show and display really creates a contrast or tension: wanting to make visible what is shameful.
Bugarin + Castle: ‘Mr. Mimic [Submit-to-Sound],’ 2026, photo detail // Courtesy of the artists and Scotland + Venice, copyright Bugarin + Castle
AH: Why did you want to focus on shame (as opposed to the typical pride parade) as a public ritual?
B + C: One of our starting points, more generally, was around the recent law changes and increased sense of hostility and aggression towards trans people in the UK. This has led to a feeling of being in a defensive, crouched position where you’re under attack and you have to use simple narratives to enter battle. As artists we wanted to retain the power of leaning into complex emotions. We want the empowerment of our exhibition to come through the methodologies and material realities, but for the focus to be on something more tricky and complex, like shame.
Inherently, shame must be in the pride parade: if we are talking about pride, then what is the shame that we are overcoming and what is the history of that? We are also trying to think about it spatially. We were interested in how different forms of space, private or public, intersect with ideas of shame.
Bugarin + Castle: ‘Submit to Sound,’ part of the exhibition ‘Shame Parade’ curated by Mount Stuart Trust for Scotland + Venice at La Biennale di Venezia in 2026, film curated by Mount Stuart and produced by Forma // Photo by Dimitri D’Ippolito, courtesy of the artists and Scotland + Venice
AH: You mentioned that you are also both drag performers and I read that you met in the queer cabaret scene. How has that specific kind of performance informed your work and your show in Venice?
B + C: In the film we are showing in Venice there are two characters: there’s Sadie, who is a trans woman who is participating in a trans voice feminization session. Meanwhile, below a trap door underneath her is another character who is dressed in a dragified version of her, lip syncing or mocking her. This character also appears in a medieval charivari parade, mimicking some of Sadie’s voice and gestures.
Leaning into these less straightforward histories of cross-dressing being used to mock, we feature that in the film but we also aim to expose the confusion or the transphobic conflation of transness and drag. Our interest is to put these complex ideas together in one work and to allow for tensions to form. Collision is a keyword: different ideas, different timeframes, different geographies colliding, rather than us trying to weave them together into a perfect bow, it’s the audience’s experience to witness this collision and to find out where they sit within that. We are not so interested in drag as impersonation, but rather using it as a tool to disturb and disrupt ways of being.
Bugarin + Castle: ‘Submit-to-Sound,’ 2026, moving image // Courtesy of the artists and Scotland + Venice, copyright Bugarin + Castle
AH: Davide, you are an architect by training, and Angel, you run the Pollyanna queer arts collective. How do these roles influence what you bring to your artist duo and your plans for Venice? How does your piece respond to the venue at Olivolo?
B + C: We are a collective and also a couple. We work and fight with each other, but in a drag way: we exaggerate and ask big questions. We want to disrupt the narrative and messify it.
There are lots of architectural and spatial references within the works. In terms of responding to the location, there are two rooms within the exhibition space. One of our installations, ‘Nocturnal Amusements,’ is specifically designed so that it cannot be viewed from a single perspective—you need to travel between the two rooms to see the whole piece. Conceptually, it’s about defying singular perspectives, but it’s also an architectural intervention that was designed for the apertures and the doors in the space. Within that, there’s a diorama and an architectural model, the perspective of which is shifted by the design itself.
We also have a 2-D print work called ‘Set Upon,’ which is a juxtaposition of different architectural archives and museum spaces in the Philippines and Scotland, where the concept of shame has been housed. We re-created a vertical shaming platform of objects used during the charivari in the Middle Ages.
There’s also a sculpture that takes inspiration from a public clock, like you might find in a train station. It’s a monument: it’s decorative, but it’s also a monument to discipline. It provides units of measurement: anatomical, vocal and mechanical. The clock itself plays on the idea of the term “clocking,” as in indicating or understanding that someone is trans. The clock features a throat with a visible thyroid notch or Adam’s Apple and as it’s ticking, it’s gulping. There’s a moment of anticipation but also defiance: it’s almost like weaponry, but it’s covered in jewels and mother of pearl.
Bugarin + Castle: ‘At Certayne Tymes,’ part of the exhibition ‘Shame Parade’ curated by Mount Stuart Trust for Scotland + Venice at La Biennale di Venezia in 2026 // Photo by Dimitri D’Ippolito, courtesy of the artists and Scotland + Venice
AH: Will there also be a performative element to the opening?
B + C: One of the dramaturgical inspirations for the shame parades is a performance that we did at the City Art Centre in Edinburgh. We were thinking through ideas of the gothic, and tropical gothic, and moments where dramatic weather and storms are paired with the forging of new beings and forces – supernatural events that disrupt the narrative. In this performance, in and amongst the sounds and lights of thunder and rain, the audience witnesses moments of forging and repairing—welding, stitching, forging together emotions. Two key vignettes that featured were a trans voice feminization session held amidst a storm, and a real teardrop being extended, accentuated and then dragged spatially across the room. We used a tincture made with real tears to duplicate Davide’s tears and processed these along the floor. Some of these moments inspire elements of our exhibition, and will re-emerge in a Venice performance.
Bugarin + Castle: ‘Sore Throat,’ 2023, detail // Courtesy of the artists
AH: Your recent video installation ‘Sore Throat’ explores the ways sound is heard through walls and how this informs the queer experience (especially in the Philippines). What experience are you trying to capture and how does that piece relate to your new work for Venice?
B + C: For ‘Sore Throat,’ we developed a new software with Studio Autonomic, which took as its starting point the idea that in cabaret, there’s no fourth wall. We were thinking about how to bring that into the video installation. In this work, the audience has to make noise in order for the film to proceed. That starts off playfully, they have to say “aaah” and then a striptease happens on screen. But soon their voices are recorded and played back, and they become antagonists in the film. First their vocal warm-up strips the fabric off in the striptease, and later it is used to shout at a queer character who is being kicked out of their home. Their voice rips away the fabric of the home, which is made from fabric backdrops on screen. We were thinking about sound passing through physical walls and how the interpretation or misinterpretation of sound, like contemporary noise complaints or historic and colonial-influenced associations with animal noises and monstrosity, has affected queer people. It was key that the audience plays an active, yet unexpected role. Sound, shame and voice are also the key themes in ‘Shame Parade.’
Davide Bugarin, Angel Cohn Castle and Morven Gregor at Mount Stuart House // Photo by Neil Hanna, courtesy Scotland + Venice
Exhibition Info
Scotland + Venice
Bugarin + Castle: ‘Shame Parade’
Exhibition: May 9-Nov. 22, 2026
scotlandandvenice.com
Olivolo, S. Pietro di Castello, 59, 30122 Venezia VE, Italy, click here for map
