A Danish court on Wednesday ordered a Volkswagen dealer to pay Chinese artist Ai Weiwei more than € 230,000 (US$258,000) in damages for using one of the artist’s works in an advert without authorisation. In 2017, SMC – the dealer – used a photo of a Volkswagen Polo parked in front of an Ai Weiwei art installation in Copenhagen to promote the launch of a new car on its website and in the dealer’s customer magazine. The work by the 61-year-old dissident artist, titled Soleil Levant , made up of 3,500 life jackets collected from refugees who arrived on the Greek island of Lesbos between 2015 and 2016, crammed into the windows of the Charlottenborg art gallery. The court held that commercial use of the work was a “clear contradiction of the considerations and thoughts behind the work”, noting the misuse could be harmful to the artist’s reputation. Ai Weiwei creates Lego portraits of Mexico’s missing students “SMC’s use of the piece of art constituted a violation of the marketing law’s paragraph … on good marketing practises,” the tribunal ruled. SMC was ordered to pay 1.5 million Danish krone (US$225,000) for unlawful use of the work and an additional 250,000 for non-financial damages. The artist announced his intention to sue the dealer in an post on Instagram in March. Ai Weiwei on creating political art in the Trump era “The infringing material was circulated to over 200,000 people, giving the false impression that I had authorised Volkswagen to use my artwork in its ad for the new Polo,” he said. The son of a poet revered by former communist leaders, Ai Weiwei helped design the famous “Bird’s Nest”-stadium for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, but fell out of favour after criticising the Chinese government. Ai Weiwei was imprisoned for 81 days in 2011 in China and has been denied a passport for four years. He has been living in Europe since 2015.