Exactly 21 years ago,
Michael Richards, an African-American sculptor of Jamaican-Costarican descent, died on the World Trade Centre in New York:
On the morning of September 11, 2001, Richards was working in his LMCC World Views studio on the 92nd floor of World Trade Center, Tower One, when the first plane struck, taking his life along with the thousands of others who passed away in the tragic events of that day. At the time of his passing, Richards was an emerging artist whose incisive aesthetic—always provocative, at times playful, yet never without a critical bent—held immense promise to make him a leading figure in contemporary art.
Materially and conceptually, Richards used the language of metaphor in his art to investigate racial inequity and the tension between assimilation and exclusion. Aviation, flight, and escape were central themes of Richards’ work, gesturing towards both repression and reprieve from social injustices, and the simultaneous possibilities of uplift and downfall, often in the context of the historical and ongoing oppression of black people. Significant points of reference for Richards included the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American pilots in United States military history, and the complexity of their triumphs in the face of segregation, as well as religious and ritual figures and stories from African and Judeo-Christian traditions. Centering his own experience, Richards used his body to cast the figures for his sculptures, who often appear as pilots, saints, or both.
In light of the devastating circumstances that took Richards’ life, the airplanes, wings, and aviation imagery that recur throughout his body of work take on a prescient resonance. Richards poetically described the notion of flight in his practice: “The idea of flight relates to my use of pilots and planes, but it also references… the idea of being lifted up, enraptured, or taken up to a safe place–to a better world.”
https://africanah.org/michael-richards-1963-2001/
Of course, it may only be by chance that Michael Richards was in the WTC-1 building on the 92nd floor at 8:46am (local time) on Tuesday. But given the way artists' work usually rises in value after their deaths, it is also possible that Richards' early visit to the studio was not accidental, but was deliberately arranged by someone. In that case, a deliberate investment in the work of a little-known emerging artist could have brought someone significant profits, but certainly not comparable to the successful investments of
Larry Silverstein, who took the WTC buildings on lease for 99 years a couple of months before the tragic events and received several billion dollars in insurance payments after their demolition.
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