Although their name is literally Sparkle, Sindri Sparkle Freyr’s work is more like the lights in a kaleidoscope: it shifts shape and changes color at every turn. The multidisciplinary artist is best known from stages all around Reykjavík, but you may also find them on bookshelves, art galleries, and who-knows-where-else.
Cartoons and Canvas
“I’m mostly doing comedy and writing,” Sindri tells me. “And I do a lot of both of those. Probably an unhealthy amount for my bank balance!” At least, comedy and writing are their focus for moment, but things change. For Sindri, it seems like they change by the day. With their work in the last ten years including painting, illustration, graphic design, video, writing, drag, comedy, and even theatre on the horizon, Sindri is not kidding about putting the “multi” in “multidisciplinary artist.”
Their interest in the arts started young. “I was just really into cartoons,” they explain. “I watched a bunch of cartoons and then I would either make fan art or turn it into something else. I started out drawing, but I was never very good,” they admit with a slight chuckle. “It was mostly the idea parts that I was pretty good at. I have always just been very good at absorbing information and turning that into something. I didn’t even realize that I could tell my own story.”
The people who hate me are going to hate me. It doesn’t actually matter what I define as.
With hopes of becoming an illustrator, they applied to Myndlistaskólinn for illustration. When they weren’t accepted because their illustrations were considered too “painterly,” they studied painting there instead. “During that,” they go on, “I basically got into storytelling podcasts, like Risk, Baudy Storytelling, and The Moth. And I realized: I could tell my own stories, so I used the paintings.”
This when Sindri’s long-term relationship with Reykjavík Fringe began. Their first performance was at the festival’s first iteration in 2018. Called Sparkle’s Cabinet of Curiosities, it was a live-painting demonstration in which they performed as an alien sent to earth to paint its landscapes. “So you went in there and there’s a bunch of crazy, sci-fi, very out there paintings. You look at the picture of the Earth and it’s also crazy and out there and you realize, ‘Oh, this is how we see the world.’ It was like supposed to be about perspective, about what it means to be different.”
Story and the Stage
Since then, Sindri has performed every year at Reykjavík Fringe. Over the years, their performances have veered away from visual art toward storytelling and comedy. Their 2020 piece won the Punch in the Face Award that year. Titled Opening Up, it was much more personal and dealt with their own identity and experience of BDSM. In 2022, their story about a near-miss with hate crime, You’re Lucky It Was Nice, won the Nordic Fringe Network Award and was also later performed in Gothenburg, Sweden.
In 2023, they performed A Man Named Fear, a stand-up set that was a list of excuses why they hadn’t gone on hormones.
Their creative journey into a more personal space has paralleled their growth as a queer person. “It’s been great actually getting to kind of reexamine all of this material,” Sindri says, “because when you’re a storyteller, you’re having to basically having to set up a bunch of frames and then getting to either combine them or just reexamine them.” They add, “art has really been a huge boon for me to figure out what’s going on in here because I’ve always struggled with my feelings. I’ve always kind of cut them off because they tend to get too big if I don’t just let them flow.”
It’s just that people don’t know what’s funny about being trans.
The process then began with coming out as pansexual as a teenager to eventually coming to terms with being trans and nonbinary. This is the way Sindri sees it: “If I look at how other people see me, it doesn’t matter if they think I’m a cross-dresser, if they think I’m a fetishist, if they think I’m a trans woman. The people who hate me are going to hate me. It doesn’t actually matter what I define as. I’m just going to use these fucking words because even if I was just a drag queen, a lot of people don’t see any difference there. And so at that point I’m fighting with that cause.”
Kyn / Líf, Laugh, Learn
Despite all this growth, they can only fit so much into a single set. “I didn’t even manage to get all this in Kyn / Líf because I just had too much to talk about!” they confess about their newest piece. In 2024, they debuted a new stand-up show at Tjarnarbíó that will open again in February, with shows on the 1st and 7th. It’s a play on the Icelandic word kynlíf, meaning sex. With Kyn meaning gender and líf meaning life, the two parts of the show deal with those topics.
Although Sindri admits that comedy has been used as propaganda against the queer community, it’s more complex than that. “People think that you can’t make fun of trans people because they’re so sensitive and that’s just not true,” they state matter-of-factly. “It’s just that people don’t know what’s funny about being trans. They have no idea!”
They explain it like watching a movie. “You know when there’s a character in the movie that does your job but they do something wrong and you’re like, ‘Oh no!’ That’s what it feels like listening to transphobic comedians. It’s like, oh no, you don’t understand. Can I please explain to you?” If anyone is able to explain it, it certainly seems like they can. “If you can laugh, you can learn,” they say, and that’s what Sindri’s aiming for.
I have always just been very good at absorbing information and turning that into something. I didn’t even realize that I could tell my own story.
At least, that is one of many, many things that they’re aiming for. In addition to the new run of Kyn / Líf, they also host the Queer Open Mic and a standup show called Bring The Laughs at Gaukurinn, as well as drag shows all around the city. They published a book about the history of pride flag that will also be released in the US this upcoming year, plus they have a poetry book and two theater shows in the works. “I just work and work and work and if I say so myself, I’m really proud of a lot of it,” they confide. “But I’m realizing, ‘Oh, I need to have fun also!’”