Ioana Mandrescu is a Romanian sound artist and musician based in Brussels. She completed her studies in her home country, continued later in France and Belgium and graduated from the EPAS programme in Ghent. At the core of her work are the human body and human produced sounds and their impact on the world. She is a collector of discarded objects, stories, medical data from various organs, with a particular focus on the heart. As a sound recordist she is constantly working on updating a personal database of man made sounds which become building blocks for her sound pieces and installations.

She is the founding member of two contemporary music groups: Quivir Ensemble (together with flautist Diana Muela Mora and clarinettist and conductor Jose Fernandez Camacho) and Opia Ensemble (together with cellist Aleksandra Pykacz). Strongly influenced by choreography and painting, she developed performances that brought together sound, film and dance. They were presented in Belgium – Bozar Opening Night, Belgium, Festival Courants d'Airs, Poland – FAMA Festival and Iran – First Edition
of the Contemporary Music Festival in Tehran. Mandrescu is also active as a teacher for sound art, music and sound for film. In 2021 and 2022 she was part of the UNESCO project Reviving the Spirit of Mosul which took part in Irak.

Projects

• Takotsubo 2026

Presentations

• performance C O M (E) P U L S I V E II, Onder Stroom, Antwerpen, Belgium, 2019
• performance Com(e)pulsive, La Senne, Brussels, Belgium, 2019