Bugarin + Castle: Shame Parade, Venice Biennale review: 'more is more'

Bugarin + Castle: Shame Parade, Olivolo, Venice ★★★★

Scotland has made a colourful return to the Venice Biennale with an exhibition by Glasgow-based duo Bugarin + Castle, which opened its doors to the public on Saturday. Having missed the festival in 2024 while Creative Scotland carried out a review of the Scotland + Venice project, the return, for this and the next two Biennales, has been greeted with relief and joy in the visual art sector.

The exhibition, at a new venue for Scotland close to the twin hubs of the Biennale, was launched with jubilant speeches from Robert Wilson, chair of Creative Scotland, Emma Nicolson, head of Visual Art, curator Morven Gregor from Mount Stuart Trust, and by artists, Davide Bugarin and Angel Cohn Castle, whose work is now on show for six months at the biggest art festival in the world.

Venice is a city of carnival and spectacle, and this is at the heart of their exhibition, Shame Parade. The artists met through Polyanna, the queer cabaret founded by Castle in Edinburgh in 2015, where they also perform. Always gloriously attired, there is a sense in which performance is not only part of what they do, but of who they are.

A “shame parade” is a tradition going back to medieval times, an act of public shaming in which those who were considered to have transgressed - often by flaunting gender stereotypes - were paraded through their community attached to a ladder on the back of a horse, accompanied by loud, discordant noise. The subject, perhaps singled out as a feminine man or over-assertive woman, was often dressed in the garb of the other gender. This practice was known variously across Europe as charivari, scampanate, or (in English) “rough music”.

In itself, this is fascinating. Then Davide Bugarin, who is originally from the Philippines, came across the word “charivari” in Filipino law, with regard to noise prevention at Manila’s North Cemetery, a 130-acre site which has its own (living) community of thousands of marginalised people. For artists fascinated by language, here was the word in contemporary usage, in a context of social control.

READ MORE: Scotland makes 'crucial' return to Venice Biennale with Bugarin + Castle show

So they subverted the idea of the shame parade, making it a celebration of difference? Well, yes - and no. That would be the simple version, and Bugarin + Castle are leaning into complexity and nuance. This work resists conclusions, refuses a single perspective. This could be a great strength; it’s also a big risk.

The artists have quickly developed their own signature aesthetic: high contrast lighting, psychedelic candy colours, a visual language which fuses cabaret, animé and drag, with more rhinestones than you can shake a stiletto heel at. The production values are detailed and meticulous. Think inch-long false nails embedded in a picture frame, sparkling with diamante and embellished with faces from Hogarth prints and you’ve got the detail, the mash-up quality, the glamour.

The first work the viewer encounters is In Certayn Tymes (the title comes from a poem by William Dunbar), a suspended sculpture in which a clockface turns into a glittering vortex of capiz shell. Embedded into it is a film showing a trans woman’s lips and throat, while the vortex itself suggests a throat, or perhaps an ear canal. To be “clocked” is to be noticed, recognised as transgender. It has a hint of menace about it: to be noticed is dangerous; the voice can give someone away.

“Are you discreet?” asks the next sculpture, Nocturnal Amusements. It’s a “jeepney” - a common form of transport in the Philippines where jeeps left over from the American occupation have been repurposed and decorated. The colourful vinyls are by a Filipino truck artist.

Through its deconstructed middle runs a trompe l’oeuil tunnel through which one can peer at a diorama in the next room. Based on the North Cemetery in Manila, this is painstakingly built from model-making miniatures to show shanty-style homes and a vignette of domestic life. However, the horse with a ladder on its back and the two fleeing figures suggest this is the aftermath of a real shame parade.

Behind the jeepney is a pile of detritus gathered after Pride marches all over Scotland: pro-Palestine flyers (“There is no pride in genocide”) mingle with Coke cans and leaflets for Victim Support. However, if queer people march in the name of “pride”, this implicitly suggests that the opposite is not far away. To be proud is to defy those who believe you should be ashamed.

The five-channel film, Submit to Sound, filmed on Bute and co-commissioned by London-based Forma, is in the last room. This feels like Bugarin + Castle’s natural metier, and both artists perform, Castle as a trans woman called Sadie, Bugarin as Mr Mimic, part medieval warrior, part sad clown, with white make-up and diamante tears.

Again, more is more. There is music by Filipino musicians Kalye Teresa, fast cuts, unusual camera angles, lurid colours, a refusal to look - literally or metaphorically - from any single perspective. At the centre is Sadie, receiving exercises from a vocal coach to feminise her voice. “I’m confident about who I am, just not with my voice,” she says.

At one point she climbs through a trapdoor, a reference to the word “trap”: in animé, a feminine man, now a slur against trans people. In another scene, she repeatedly falls from a horse, receiving instructions as if she is a stunt woman in a film: “Just launch and commit to the fall!” the director shouts.

Shame Parade doesn’t subvert shame as much as dissect it, open it up and reveal its insides. While Bugarin + Castle’s work is visually sumptuous, it’s important to listen as much as look. This is about words and voices, rough music and soft Filipino ballads. It’s about who is allowed to have a voice and who has to fight to be heard, when that might be dangerous, and why you might do it anyway. Being discreet is safer. But sometimes it’s not enough to be discreet. Sometimes you need to perform.

Until 22 November

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