A woman trailed by a black veil slinks in on cat’s feet, wide-eyed, seemingly searching. She pulls the veil down over her face and begins to build a structure.

Slowly.

An audio track plays instrumental music and women’s voices as she works, dances, speaks, laughs.

Back when Lawrence artist Diana Dunkley was at Kansas University in the 1970s, this would have been called conceptual sculpture. In 2002, it’s a performance/installation.

Dunkley created the piece, the 11th in a series of works whose titles can only be spoken, and Kansas City, Mo., artist Sarah Harrington performs it. It premiered in May at “Common Ground,” an international art exhibit in Ottawa, Ontario, where the audience received it emotionally.

“I think they were entranced,” Dunkley said. “Some cried.”

Harrington said she herself almost shed tears during the nearly hour-long piece.

“Performance is so emotionally straining,” she said.

She’ll pour herself into the piece again Wednesday at the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 N.H., where the piece will be shown locally for the first time in the center’s main gallery.

The Title of This Piece Can Only Be Spoken #11 (the real name can not be written) is an installation because as Harrington performs it, she is building what essentially becomes an altar.

The piece frequently changes mood, dynamics and speed.

“It does take people through a lot of transitions in their emotions,” Dunkley said. “It kind of starts sneakily. People don’t know that Sarah is there to perform it.”

Harrington’s performance is layered on top of a soundtrack Dunkley created by piecing together sound bites about sacred