Briela Veneno: learning to begin again

Starting over is rarely as romantic as electronic music likes to imagine. New cities promise possibility, but they also demand repetition. New rooms. New introductions. New scenes that have no reason to trust you yet. What looks like movement from the outside often feels like reconstruction from within.

At 24, Briela Veneno has already learned how to begin several times again. After establishing herself within Colombia’s electronic landscape, performing at festivals including Baum Festival, Estéreo Picnic and EDC Colombia, she carried her sound beyond South America, touring Europe before eventually settling in Spain. Each move required a different kind of adjustment. Not only professionally, but personally.

Yet what stands out in her story is the absence of nostalgia. She rarely speaks about migration as loss. Instead, she describes it as a process of expansion.

“Migration has been, above all, a deeply transformative experience of self-exploration and self-discovery,” she says. “Being in a position where you have to start from scratch and rely entirely on yourself inevitably brings out your ability to create, adapt and find solutions for every challenge that arises.”

That sense of self-reliance runs through everything she describes. The uncertainty is real. So are the frustrations. But the emphasis consistently returns to growth rather than displacement. Beginning again became less about abandoning a previous version of herself and more about discovering what remained intact under pressure.

New York intensified that process.

The city arrived with its own velocity. Faster, louder and more demanding than anything she had previously experienced. It became both a challenge and a mirror.

“New York has something very specific about it: its deeply creative energy,” she explains. “Being exposed to a city that moves so fast and demands so much allows you to discover just how capable you are of adapting to a rhythm where creativity and artistic vision must take centre stage.”

Finding a place inside that ecosystem required more than visibility. It required patience. Like countless artists arriving in unfamiliar scenes, she found herself repeatedly having to establish credibility from the ground up.

“It is still a process I continue to navigate,” she says. “When your name is not yet widely recognized, you need stronger arguments to build credibility. That is when discipline, talent and passion begin to speak for you.”

Community, in her view, is often misunderstood. It is easy to celebrate connection in theory. Building it in practice is slower. Trust accumulates gradually. Relationships develop through consistency rather than proximity.

“Building a scene is about creating connections and making people identify with your character, your sound and your essence. Seeking opportunities is essential, but once the door opens, you need to show why you can connect with people in a genuine way.”

Many artists who move between countries describe a fractured sense of belonging. Briela does not.

She resists the idea entirely.

“I have never really felt that level of divided identity,” she says. “I see every experience as part of the process. Rather than feeling suspended between cultures, I prefer to see those influences as a source of inspiration.”

The distinction matters. Rather than creating distance from herself, each new environment seems to have reinforced what was already there.

At the center of that remains Colombia.

Not as nostalgia. Not as a memory preserved at a distance. As a living part of her artistic language.

“The most important thing is simply being Colombian. I don’t think it will ever be a silent influence because it is fundamentally who I am.”

For Briela, that influence is emotional before it is musical. It exists in the way she approaches passion, connection and expression.

“Being Colombian means carrying a strong emotional intensity and an incredible capacity to feel passion deeply. Music is my passion, and being Colombian allows me to be transparent, emotional and authentic in my artistic career.”

That intensity is something she still associates most strongly with the dancefloors she came from.

Having performed across different countries and scenes, she speaks about Colombian audiences with particular affection. Not because other crowds feel disconnected, but because the relationship between audience and music often reveals itself differently there.

“The level of expression and appreciation for music is especially visible there,” she says. “You can truly feel the devotion on the dancefloor through the audience’s euphoric interaction and emotional engagement with the music.”

Beneath the movement between cities sits another reality that electronic music rarely discusses openly.

Independence.

Behind every performance exists a layer of invisible labour. Emails, logistics, finances, networking, planning. For artists operating without managers, agencies or large support structures, those responsibilities never disappear.

“When you are a more independent artist, you need to be capable of generating opportunities and managing everything yourself,” she explains. “Financial responsibilities, public relations, the search for acceptance, and both mental and physical exhaustion become highly exposed realities.”

The glamour attached to international careers often obscures these realities. Migration can be creatively rewarding while simultaneously demanding resilience on a daily basis. Both things can exist at once.

There have been moments where the process became exhausting. Not because she questioned who she was, but because adaptation itself requires energy.

“I have always been very clear about who I am and what I want to communicate through my music,” she says. “For me, migration has never meant changing my identity. It has meant expanding it.”

The distinction returns again.

Expansion rather than reinvention.

Growth rather than rupture.

Looking back, Briela does not describe a carefully planned transformation. The changes arrived gradually through experience, exposure and necessity. New cities brought new perspectives. New scenes demanded new skills. The evolution happened almost unconsciously.

What remains constant is the foundation underneath it.

“I feel that I am continuously evolving while staying connected to the essence of who I am as both a person and an artist.”

For Briela Veneno, migration has never been about becoming someone else. It has been about discovering how far a sense of self can travel without losing its shape.