My guess is that you are using the incorrect pins for SCL and SDA.
My suggestion would be to use my hd44780 library package.
It includes a diagnostic sketch that will test your i2c signals and tell you which pins are the SCL and SDA pins.
You can read more about it here: GitHub - duinoWitchery/hd44780: Extensible hd44780 LCD library
Spend some time reading about the library before installing it.
Install the library using the library manager.
The i/o class that you will want is hd44780_I2Cexp.
The diag sketch is called I2CexpDiag.
The library includes many other examples for the i2c backpack class hd44780_I2Cexp.
The library has many features like automatic address and pin mapping detection so you don't need to know or configure the i2c address.