Wei Weng: The Museum of Lost Heirs

The Museum of Lost Heirs is an ongoing project by Chinese artist Wei Weng. It originated as The Heir Hunter Office (2024) during a residency in Kyoto, where gallery visitors were invited to “claim” objects left behind by Japan-born individuals who had settled and passed away in the United Kingdom.

For this Australian debut at Void_Melbourne, inheritance narratives are translated into the immigrant languages spoken across Victoria.

AI chatbots calibrate the emotional tenor of an unreachable past for contemporary audiences—transforming bureaucratic loss into intimate encounter. The work connects present and future generations to the unclaimed stories left along the ambitious paths of migration.