Like many thematic surveys of contemporary art, "Paradise Now? Contemporary Art From the Pacific" at the Asia Society circles its organizing theme erratically. It alternates between the substantial and the flimsy, the revelatory and the merely didactic, art that argues its case directly and art whose intended (if not actual) effect is supplied primarily by wall labels.

Organized by Melissa Chiu, curator of contemporary Asian and Asian-American art at the Asia Society, the show nonetheless reflects an important development: the new awareness of Pacific, or Polynesian, cultures in the art and life of the region, most of all in New Zealand, the area's largest island and an economic hub. Of the show's 16 artists, 12 were born or now live in New Zealand; others live in Hawaii, Samoa or New Caledonia.

Art has played no small role in this attitudinal shift, as outlined in an essay by Karen Stevenson, an art professor at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Beginning with Captain Cook's voyages of exploration, the area was seen as an incarnation of paradise on earth that was free for the taking by outsiders. The twin process of being at once exploited and exoticized was pervasive, but the histories and mixings of its peoples and cultures vary.

The British, who settled New Zealand, negotiated a treaty with the Maoris, who have an unusually strong warrior tradition. The treaty has the rare distinction of being enforced. A result is a culture that has been unusually hybrid and officially bilingual almost from first contact.

In contrast, the British settled Fiji via India, taking along Indian servants, who evolved into the island's social elite. After a coup by native Fijians in 2000, the Indians, who make up nearly 45 percent of the island's population, have limited political and property rights.

By the mid-19th century Americans were staking claims in Hawaii, instigating the removal of its royal ruler to make way for the development of the pineapple industry. An especially pernicious aspect of American involvement was the testing of atomic bombs on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands from 1946 to 1958. The inhabitants of the atoll were forced to relocate, but fallout from the initial detonation caused fatalities on nearby islands and established a legacy of birth defects that continues.

The artists in "Paradise Now?" frequently examine postcolonial conditions by combining indigenous motifs, materials and rituals with well-worn strategies of conceptual art, process art and performance art, as well as post-conceptual painting, sculpture and video. Some results are fresher than others.

Niki Hastings-McFall, for example, makes familiar but visually luminous leis, the welcoming tourist clichÈ, by stringing together the small white plastic fish that contain soy sauce at Japanese restaurants in New Zealand. "Historic Waikiki," a multimedia presentation by Downwind Productions (a collaboration between Gaye Chan, a Chinese-born artist living in Hawaii, and Andrea Feeser, a Japanese-born art historian and social critic who teaches at Clemson University in South Carolina), also operates within known formulas. But its droll imitation of a tourism Web site details the dark side of the American presence in Hawaii in memorable detail.

The show's painters ó Shane Cotton, W. D. Hammond and John Pule, who all live in New Zealand ó both impress and disappoint in their attempts to adapt current pictorial vocabularies. Cy Twombly, New Image painting and Adolph Gottlieb may variously spring to mind when you're in front of these canvases. Yet in all instances, contrasting symbols, myths and history are illuminated by a convincing combination of fine detailing, forthright paint handling and imaginative juxtaposition.

Reflecting the importance of the sea and the role of dance in many Pacific cultures, Ken Thaiday (originally from the Torres Strait Islands and now in Australia) concocts elaborate headdresses incorporating the forms of sharks, boats and fishermen. More skeptically, the New Zealand artist Michel Tuffery makes fabulous pointedly self-referential creatures, often used in performances, from cut and welded tin cans. His armored barracuda and yellowfin tuna are made of the cans of fish that are imported because overfishing has reduced the population in local waters. A ferocious, gaudy life-size bull is fastidiously fashioned from tins of corned beef, whose high sodium and fat content has contributed to health problems among the Maori. In a foreign context, the decorative bark of these works is more noticeable than their political bite, but it helps to see them in action on a video of the artists' performances.

Another New Zealand sculptor, Michael Parekowhai, has lined the Asia Society's entrance with a solid row of shiny fiberglass casts of a large Maori man in typical security-guard garb. At once regal, reassuring and intimidating, these casts suggest contemporary temple figures while reflecting anxieties about terrorist attacks in the United States.

The show's standout is "Native Portraits n. 19897," a multiscreen video installation by Lisa Reihana based on 19th-century studio photographs of Maori men, women and families. On a series of small, portrait-sized high-definition screens, Ms. Reihana and her friends assume different poses in dress that is variously native, European or contemporary. Their images shift from still to moving, from black and white to sepia, to a beautiful hand-tinted effect, to full color, and even to abstraction in a series of kaleidoscopic patterns based on figures performing Maori dances, which are also shown whole.

The traditional Maori fierceness is evident in flashing weapons and exaggerated grimaces (enhanced by ornate tattoos). This stylized hostility is balanced by dances and greeting gestures in which delicately fluttering hands reflect New Zealand's large bird population. On one screen a series of short vignettes enact exchanges between a European photographer and Maori subjects, delineating constantly changing balances of power and effectively shredding any notion of ethnographic truth.

A beautifully executed examination of the intricacies, intimacies, manipulations and betrayals that underlie relationships built on colonialism, Ms. Reihana's piece is highly specific, universally applicable and utterly legible. However, it is far from the only reason to visit this instructive exhibition.