Carolina Varela was born in Coimbra in 1992.

In 2013, she began studying jazz at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa. In 2016, she joined the band Rosa Mimosa y Sus Mariposas as a vocalist and keyboardist, remaining with the group until 2025. The following year, she joined the cast of Ensaio para uma cartografia by Mónica Calle, performing as an actress. This project, in which she worked until 2023, was staged at venues such as Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, Festival Mirada (São Paulo), Utrecht Spring, Points Communs (Paris), and Zürcher Theater Spektakel (Zurich). Also in 2017, she became a member of the band Vitória & the Kalashnicoles, performing as a bassist and vocalist.

In 2018, she was invited by Mónica Garnel to support the cast vocally in The Swimming Pool Party.

In 2020, she co-composed the soundtrack for Aurora Negra with Yaw Tembe—a co-creation by Isabel Zuaa, Cleo Tavares, and Nádia Yracema—which premiered at TNDMII. She continued to collaborate with the collective on Cosmos (2022), composing alongside Yaw Tembe and Xullaji, and A missão da missão (2023), in collaboration with Cire Ndiaye.

In 2021, she premiered Carta at TNDMII and O Escuro Que Te Ilumina ou As Últimas 7 Palavras de Cristo at Culturgest, both directed by Mónica Calle. That same year, she also performed as an actress in Aqui pra Dentro – O Golfinho André, by Miguel Branco, a production by the Mascarenhas-Martins company.

Her debut as a creator came in 2022 with the performance ANORMA, developed in partnership with Jorge Carvalhal and Sofia Vitória. This project was supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and GDA Foundation.

In 2023, she presented BOOOM! – Une odyssée dans des territoires en lutte at Théâtre Vidy (Lausanne), with subsequent performances at Théâtre du Grütli (Geneva) and Centre de culture ABC (La Chaux-de-Fonds). In the same year, she premiered her first solo work, Dragon Soup, as part of the Kilombo programme at the Alkantara Festival, and made her film debut in BAAN by Leonor Teles, screened at the Locarno Film Festival.

In 2024, she performs in Eartha Quit by Cire Ndiaye at the Temps d’Image festival, and co-creates corpo-travessia with Melissa Rodrigues, a walking-performance for the project VOLTAS – Lápis Azul/Lápis Vermelho, by Zaratan. That same year, she collaborates with Vitória on the creation of micdrop: chão sagrado (an essay on exhaustion), a project commissioned by Teatro do Bairro Alto for the podcast Dito e Feito.

She is currently developing her next performance, The Invention of Rest, scheduled to premiere in the second half of 2025.