A slave's lament, believed to have been written by Robert Burns, will be at the centre of Scotland's show at the world's biggest visual arts festival this year.

Glasgow-based artist Graham Fagen, with Scottish composer Sally Beamish and reggae musician Ghetto Priest, have worked on a new version of the poem and song from 1792 which will form the aural centrepiece of the show in Venice this year.

The sound of the new recording of the song, produced with noted music producer Adrian Sherwood, will play throughout the four rooms of the Scotland + Venice exhibition at the 16th century Palazzo Fontana at the Venice Biennale.

The poem and song are not certain to have been written by Burns, but they are often attributed to the national bard, with lines sung from the point of view of a slave: 'It was in sweet Senegal that my foes did me enthral/For the lands of Virginia,-ginia, O/Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more/And alas! I am weary, weary O.'

Fagen said he was inspired to centre the show on the song as he was intrigued not only by reggae but by Burns nearly moving to work in Jamaica in 1786.

Also included in the show - which opens in May - will be sculptures, including that of a rope tree, made by Powderhall Bronze of Edinburgh, drawings and prints of Fagen's teeth, which he said is an attempt to "draw consciousness" and four new sculptures made in steel and ceramic.

The Burns song will be played by members of the Scottish Ensemble, led by violinist Jonathan Morton, and displayed on four video screens in the main room of the Palazzo Fontana in the centre of Venice, overlooking the Grand Canal.

The show is being curated by Hospitalfield Arts, of Arbroath in Angus.

Fagen said: "I went to school in Irvine and each January we recited off by heart a Burns poem or song, and as I grew up in school I developed a curiously in punk and reggae music.

"I grew up with this curiosity: why my cultural heritage felt slightly alien and distant, but the cultural opposite, Jamaican reggae, meant much more to me and my peer group on a council housing scheme in Irvine.

"I suppose I started addressing that curiosity when I discovered that Burns had booked passage to go and work in Jamaica, and that fact of history gave me not only a historical but a conceptual bridge to that part of history.

"And at school we were never told that Burns was ready to go and work on a plantation."

The new venue will also accommodate 21 students selected from seven art and design colleges from across Scotland.

Beamish said: "I heard the record he made with Ghetto Priest [in 2005] and I was really inspired by it, and the thought of it being performed in Venice was very attractive.

"I don't know much about reggae but I responded to what I was hearing, but I was influenced by jazz as well, which I do know.

"My parts are influenced by Scottish traditional instrumentation, but also the baroque, which is apt for Venice."

Ghetto Priest said: "Coming together with Graham for this project was engraved on the path of 'destiny'....I think we played our roles well."