Signs and symbols are central to visual communication, shaping how cultures convey meaning, values, and collective memory. This study investigates the Bhaiya Dooj Narrative Chowk Poorana, a symbolic ritual folk art practiced by Hindu women in Uttar Pradesh, India. Despite its cultural richness, this ephemeral tradition has received little scholarly attention, particularly with respect to its visual grammar and the contextual significance of its motifs. Through ethnographic fieldwork in Kanpur district with thirty practitioners, we documented design specimens and conducted semi-structured interviews. From six distinct compositions, thirty-nine unique motifs were identified and categorized into floral, animal, human, symbolic, and geometric forms. Applying Charles Morris’s semiotic framework, we analyzed syntactic arrangements, semantic meanings, and pragmatic roles within ritual practice. The findings reveal that Bhaiya Dooj Chowk Poorana operates as a coherent visual language that narrates the festival while encoding values of kinship, prosperity, devotion, and protection. As one of the foundational studies on the visual analysis of Chowk Poorana, this work extends semiotic inquiry to ephemeral folk traditions and offers pathways for future comparative research on ritual arts. Through this, it contributes to design research by advancing culturally sensitive communication and supporting the preservation of intangible cultural heritage.
Pandey et al. (Fri,) studied this question.
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