Vanitas still lifes are artworks about the transience and brevity of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death. The vanitas theme also touches upon the contemporary theme of consumerism: while our lives are transient so are (almost) all things we surround ourselves with. The workshop Vanitas XL explores the possibilities and pitfalls of the modern threedimensional vanitas installation. The workshop is aimed at creating vanitas installations with the use of living and dead plant materials, handpicked and collected on or in the vicinity of Boisbuchet's domaine. Non-plant materials, underlining the theme of consumerism, will be mixed in.

Participants of the workshop will start by making small individual installations on a table-size format in one of the pavilions on the domaine. Subsequently, things will be scaled up in a joint effort to make an extra large installation on the chateau's big lawn. This might require some radical solutions, but vanitas artworks are ultimately spectacle pieces. Therefore it is also necessary to make a pedestal, container or platform on which the collective installation is given the opportunity to convey its memento mori message in a most radiant way.