Wifredo Lam, the modernist Cuban painter of Cantonese and African descent, has finally got his first ever retrospective in Hong Kong, a beautiful exhibition at the Asia Society by the name of Homecoming. Faced with such an interesting, deeply original artist, it may seem slightly reductive to start from his biography – but his practice is so deeply rooted in it, and the cultural background he draws from is so unusual, that it is impossible to start from anywhere else. Lam’s complex personal history is given its rightful space in the Asia Society exhibition, with detailed descriptions of his parents and their heritage, supported by a vast archive of photographic material. His paintings and drawings are on view, from his early works of portraiture as a young art student to large oil or tempera canvases featuring his signature mythical figures, taken from African religious traditions and his own imagination, with a lingering, subtle Chinese aesthetic; along with his later works, dedicated to printing and etching, in which his distinctive vision is stripped down to its …