During October and November of 2016, college buildings were occupied by students in university campuses located in all regions of Brazil. The movement was triggered by short term events concerned with politics in a traditional sense. Some of these episodes were a parliamentary coup d’etat against the president Dilma Rousseff; the proposal for a Constitutional amendment that limited public investments in areas such as health and education; and a decree, imposed by the new government, of a reform in secondary education. But as the movement gained strength it revealed a set of political agendas related with new student activism, youth identities, course curricula and first-generation university students. One of the colleges occupied was the Escola de Arquitetura (School of Architecture) of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Federal University of Minas Gerais), situated in Belo Horizonte. Since 2021, thematic oral history interviews have been conducted with the former students of this college in order to document their memories of activism. During the interviews, they remember the daily life of the occupation, in narratives about the functioning of a collective kitchen, the night rounds that ensured the security of the building or the workshops held in a square attached to the college. They also review the conflicts and motives (personals or collectives) that led them to participate in this political movement. Regardless of the theme recalled, all interviewees resort to pictures, posters or other graphic objects produced throughout the occupations to remember their activism. In that sense, the aim of this paper is to analyze the memories evoked during these interviews with an emphasis on these visual elements. The research has shown that visual culture was not only a key feature of the movement but also is mobilized as a way of building posterior sense to experiences of political activism.