CINDY SHERMAN, 33, belongs to a new American avant-grade which emphasizes content, narrative and ideas while exploring the effect of the visual image on the self and on culture. Sherman herself has attracted international attention for her provocative and grotesque photographs, most of which she appears in. Yet Sherman's photographs, which will be on display at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) through January 17, cannot be called self-portraits, for the artist uses make-up, costumes and wigs to create different characters, different personae in each piece.

The two-floor exhibit at the ICA is organized according to different periods in Sherman's short career. Her earliest photographs are "film stills," small black-and-white pieces in which she assumes the role of an imaginary starlet caught for the camera in a contrived Hollywood moment. Already in these early works, which date from the late '70s, one sees the artist's preoccupation with her own transformed image. The film stills reflect, says Sherman, "the role playing that everyone does through life."

Moving from these small black and white photos, one is startled by the large, horizontal, color "centerfold" images which make up makeup Sherman's next series of pieces. Commissioned and then rejected by Vanity Fair, these photos picture the artist crouched on the floor or on a bed in various costumes and wigs. In all the images, her characters express fear, alienation and helplessness. Some accuse Sherman of reinforcing negative female stereotypes, but she resolutely denies the charge. She wants, she says, merely "to make people uncomfortable in their expectations of seeing cleavage."

CLIMBING THE stairs to the second floor of the exhibit, the viewer is confronted by 10 "costume dramas," enormous, eight-foot tall color fashion photos. From the rosy-checked all-American girl to the angry looking woman with the blonde hair in her face, Sherman has perfected what she calls the look of "anti-glamour." Many of these works were commissioned by Paris fashion designers, and Sherman's seems to have deliberately tried to make herself look ugly in their glamorous clothes.

This floor of the exhibit is dominated by bizarre and grotesque "fairy-tale scenes" in which Sherman creates her fullest narratives, single images which bring forth a dream or fantasy. These disturbing images feature Sherman as a variety of different characters, including an Arabian prince, a deformed pig-like beast and a drowned corpse. Set in an eerie and frightening landscape of rocks and gel lighting, these fairy tales jump from Sherman's imagination into our own.

IN THE past year, Sherman has begun to lessen her presence in her work. Her new subject is food. One piece, which she privately calls "Bulimia at the Beach," depicts a repulsive mixture of vegetable soup and crushed cupcakes. Sherman appears only in a reflection in the mirrored sunglasses on the sand. In her most recent photographs, Sherman is completely absent from the tableau. She has surrendered her "canvas" entirely to a mixture of hotdogs and wind-up toys in one, and a mask full of decayed dog food in another.

How disturbing are these images for Sherman, images which often depict her own death? "I kind of like them," she says. "The grosser they are, the more I'm entertained by them. Sherman doesn't understand post-modern, feminist and semiotic analyses of her work and avoids over-intellectualizing her work. She says she simply wants to "shake people up, to make them really think about wanting to own a work of art."

Sherman likes to keep moving forward, to constantly change her work. "I don't like to repeat myself," she says. She plans to go back to smaller size works and continue to restrain using herself as a subject. When asked what it feels like to be so young and have achieved so much success, Sherman responds with characteristic unpretentiousness. She says she tries to keep thing in perspective by separating herself from the artist who gets so much publicity. "I just don't feel like I'm the intellectual behind it all," she says.