NEW YORK—“IN/SIGHT," a group exhibition of contemporary art by American Indians at the Chelsea Art Museum, opens with what is likely one of the strangest pairs of paintings ever displayed in Chelsea. The first, Coyote with Hot Dog, is self-explanatory: the animal, posing before a somber, gray backdrop, holds the mustard-adorned meal in its mouth, looking rather content. In the second, two coyotes roam an empty museum and appear a bit less docile. Its title, Death of a Curator, suggests they have infiltrated the museum and are looking for blood — a risky pick from curators Michael Chapman and Clarissa Dalrymple.

The obvious reference in these paintings, both by Steven Yazzi, would seem to be to German artist Joseph Beuys, who lived with a coyote during his multi-day 1974 performance I Like America and America Likes Me, enacting shaman-esque rituals that he said would heal the trauma wrought on American Indians by European colonization. “You could say that a reckoning has to be made with the coyote," he explained. In Yazzi’s paintings, Beuys’s muse is rendered alternately farcical and murderous, stripping away the German’s mysticism and highlighting Western art’s historically dubious relationship with indigenous and marginalized cultures.

Even today, while most minority groups can claim at least some hard-won successes within contemporary art, one would be hard pressed to find a successful American Indian artist showing in Chelsea. That makes the exhibition, organized by American Indian arts advocacy group UNRESERVED Alliance, a worthy, though politically complicated, cause. It tempts the question: What is the line between empowering an unrecognized group and ghettoizing it?

The wall labels list not only a work’s artist but also the artist’s tribal affiliation: For example, “Athena Latocha, Lakota," next to three tiny birch panels splattered bright orange, blue, and red — near-abstractions that hint at storm-tossed seas or snapshots of bubbling lava. One wonders if her work is best served grouped together here with the more than 20 other artists in this sprawling exhibition. The labels encourage viewers to see the work not as art but as artifacts of culture, even when its form and content may have no direct link to American Indian life, as seems to be the case with a fair number of works here.

That’s certainly true of Nathan Hart’s Buckeye Bust, a hollowed, scarred tree trunk that he has smoothed into an alluring ovoid shape. Hart’s careful carving reveals how water and weather have affected various parts of the wood in different ways, with some sections appearing to be burned or bleeding; it’s a sleeker, baroque version of a Huma Bhabha sculpture.

Many works on display do interact with the history, culture, and iconography of American Indians, to wonderful effect. Preston Singletary, a member of the Tlingit tribe, produces elegant boxes and baskets out of sand-carved and hand-blown glass. One of his baskets features traditional iconography of eagles and bears sandwiched between geometric bands that could adorn classical Greek pottery.

Likewise, Cloud Medicine Crow, who refers to himself as a “reservation realist," contributes lush, green landscapes populated by Indian friends and families traveling on the open road under crisp blue skies. In one painting, a group of young men have parked their car and cracked open cans of Budweiser. It’s an all-American sight, not so different, perhaps, than the image of Nate Lowman arriving halfway through the opening to support his friend Dalrymple, see the work, and mingle with the diverse crowd.

Until February 13, when "IN/SIGHT" closes, Chelsea has some frankly unlikely exhibitors — who, though possessing disparate styles, agendas, and projects — have been brought together by their common background. What comes next?